


The Things That Stay

by singagainsoon



Series: "The Things That Stay" 'verse [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Drabble Collection, Ficlet Collection, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Newton Geiszler Recovery Arc, Non-Linear Narrative, Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Compliant, Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Fix-It, Porn With Plot, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Pre-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Recovery, Science Husbands, there's sex and mentions of it so be advised, theyre all related and intertwined but in a nonlinear way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-04-27 03:26:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 25,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14416659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singagainsoon/pseuds/singagainsoon
Summary: The war-free world waits outside their door, poised and eager to burst into life and set itself in motion, but Hermann climbs back onto his side of the bed, folding his spindly limbs beneath the covers. If he indulges Newton’s tendency to stay in bed until the last moment, they may be late for their weekly appointment with the therapist; but nothing seems quite as sweet as stretching the morning as far as it can go.-a nonlinear collection of one-shots, drabbles, ficlets. mostly fluff because we've all had enough angst. previously titled "your capable hands"





	1. well, at least the war is over

_Dr. Gottlieb:_

_I am looking forward to hearing back from you in regards to the research you are doing. I am extremely interested in your work and believe we can get a lot of great things done in the future if we pool our resources and put our heads together. Here’s to a bright future._

_Sincerely,_

_Newt Geiszler_  
  


 

* * *

 

 

He is not improving.

Hermann knows this. He knows it, and it frightens him more than any looming, shadowy creature the depths of his nightmares could pull. Visceral dread takes up unwelcome residence in the space between his lungs. He spends hours hunched painfully over his desk, the disjointed armature of a creature not put together quite right. Hermann agonizes over every inch of Newton’s hastily-scrawled notes, wringing the coffee-stained pages in his hands like he might manage to squeeze some final saving bit of knowledge from them.

He would take arguing again, fighting and pretending he found Newton Geiszler as utterly intolerable as he thought Newton found him. Even the incessant blare of Newton’s tinny rock music would have been better than the inescapable silence.

He thinks, unbidden, about the first time Newton had ever made him laugh; it was only a small laugh, something he fought to disguise as a cough, but he had laughed. And Newton's stupid _insufferable_ face had lit up like a -

The empty desk on the other end of the lab mocks him openly until he gives in to the white hot sting of frustration burning behind his eyes and storms out into the hall, leaving a disaster in his wake.

Sometimes, when Newton finally falls unconscious, head lolling back, Hermann can see the gentle fluttering of his eyes behind his eyelids, the restless beating of moth wings against a lightbulb.

Just like before, just like old times, but not really.

They do not let him rest; he spits and seethes, thrashes wildly against his restraints until, suddenly, he does not. A plug somewhere is pulled, the power to Newton's hijacked system shutting down all at once. When he sleeps, his fingers twitch and his face contorts until he hardly bears any resemblance to the man Hermann has known well over a decade. Hemann tries to imagine how it must feel to be knocking on the walls of your own head, trapped and alone in a body that you no longer possess. He has never had a particularly active imagination.

In a way, though, he knows. (There are so many things that he knows.) In the shaky space of the Drift that remains between them, Hermann feels the agony of loneliness, the torture that he cannot reach Newt no matter how he strains. (Oh, how he tries.)

It is a small rest to look at something other than the mess his once-neat chalkboard has devolved into - even if the _something_ is the bare walls of Newton’s high-security cell, the dark circles around Dr. Geiszler’s lifeless eyes, the deep red streak that trickles from his nose and paints a path over the sickening twist of his lips. It is exhausting to argue with the monster wearing Newton’s weary face. Hermann fantasizes, time after time after _time,_ of rehabilitating Newton himself, hidden away in the calm familiarity of Hermann’s tidy flat. At least there, Newton would be cared for, loved.

He fears, more than he has ever feared anything - deep and raw and overpowering, what the PPDC does to Newton when Hermann cannot be stationed dutifully by his side to ward them off with a cold stare and a swing of his cane. They have had to forcibly escort him from Newton’s cell on countless occasions, hauling the profanity-spewing scientist down the long hallway, dragging him kicking and screaming. He knows, deep in the pit of his uneasy stomach, that they are not kind to Newton.

He has had mornings, cold and grey and soundless, where Newton greeted him sporting fresh wounds - cuts, dark bruises, small scrapes. Hermann shudders at the thought of what they might do if there was no one to care about Newton, no one looking out for him. The images of it play like the highlight reel of a snuff film behind his eyelids when they finally shutter closed. He has awakened countless times to rush to his bathroom, hand clamped firmly over his mouth.

The notion crosses his mind once (briefly, though the guilt that follows immediately after hangs around his shoulders like a wet wool coat) that perhaps the best thing would be for Newton to pass quietly, peacefully, before the precursors could kill him, before the PPDC could break him into jagged pieces.

But there is a way to salvage Newton from the wreck they have bent him into, to pull his soul from the twisted remains of his insides. There is a way.

It is a mathematical matter, as most things are, an answer that lies buried deep at the end of a finite string of integers. There is _always_ a solution. Yes, Hermann tells himself, steeled against the taunts and the blood-chilling fear. There is a solution, and he will find it. The weight of numbers presses heavily on his eyes, on his shoulders, on his heart. What is the probability that Newton will recover? That he will retain whatever sense of self that still haunts his body? What will be the outcome if he does not? What what _what -_ What good is his brain if it will not help him save Newton?

 

 

* * *

  


_with all due respect dude you really are one arrogant bastard, aren’t u?????_

 

 

* * *

  


Newton is small and sickly in the hospital bed, washed out beneath the fluorescents, like the Precursors took something from him when they were driven from his head. Perhaps they did, making off with him like a thief in the night. His freckles, spattered like abstract art over his nose, stand out in harsh contrast to the deathly pale of his cheeks. Even Newton’s tattoos look faded. Hermann still remembers the first time he saw them, Newton rolling up the sleeves of his wrinkled white shirt as if he knew with absolute certainty that Hermann would be positively appalled at the sight of them. Gottlieb had felt guilty, then - on behalf of the people affected by these monsters, the cities razed to nothing, the dirt still fresh atop so many graves. Newton had been anything but ashamed of himself, hiking his sleeves up at every opportunity, inviting Hermann to stare. Of course he had stared - how could he _not_ when everything about Newton had been simultaneously so infuriating and so captivating?

He stares now, trying to reconcile the Newton that bounces wildly through his memories with the Newton that lay barely-alive in front of him.

“ _Idiot_ ,” Hermann hisses softly, no malice behind it. If he would have just taken the time to see _Alice_ \- that dreadful, dreadful thing - he could have done something. If he would have just let Shao _shoot_ Newton -

No. This was the boy who used to scrape his knees chasing after bugs, the teenager who took solace in the vastness of the stars, the infinity of life yet to be lived, the man whose research manifested in breathless strings of words. The bits of himself that Newton had kept tucked close to his heart stopped being secrets after the Drift; Hermann holds them, snapshots in sweaty palms until they disintegrate.

Hermann counts in squares, mutters quietly as many integers as he can force himself to concentrate on before he begins to lose feeling in his good leg. He has been too long in this damned chair. No amount of statistics and carefully compiled data can do anything to soothe him. Newton is hardly a typical case. There are no lines for him to fit between, no standards, no commonly observed symptoms and side effects.

There are whispers along every corridor, suspicious glances passed like notes. The doctors decide to keep Newton heavily sedated for the time being - a unanimous decision, all parties in solemn agreement. They are afraid of him still. Hermann can see it in their careful posture, the distance they keep, the quiet tones. No matter the progress Newton makes, he will always be a monster to them.

But Newton is a house with the lights off, burgled empty in the depths of sleep and left none the wiser. His cold hand feels paper-thin beneath Hermann’s own. He is no longer three dimensional, and the ache of it is enough to bow Hermann’s shoulders, to crack his ribs and sting behind his eyes.

He would give anything for Newton to make a crack about his sweater, grinning like  he'd never again say something funnier. _He might not._

The assurances of the specialists in their crisp white coats do little to ease the persistent hammering in Dr. Gottlieb’s temples. _One day at a time_ , they say, patronizing, placating. Hermann is not a child, not someone to be talked down to. The symphony of beeps and machinery begins to vaguely resemble the beat of a song Newton used to play when he was elbows-deep in Kaiju entrails all those lifetimes ago, comforting now where it had once driven him mad. _One day at a time-_ There is so much they do not know. _One day at a goddamn time_ , and Hermann paints formulas in the emptiness of the hospital room, walks circles in the numbers and wears holes in the floor. Any variable could be incorrect. Anything could be off, even by a decimal point. Where there are errors, there can be corrections.

There is so much they _could not_ know. He is powerless to predict the outcome, but he cannot keep every dismal possibility from flooding unbidden into every secret corner of his mind. No combination of numbers could have _ever_ accounted for Newton Geiszler.

He closes his eyes, his brow creasing neat lines into his forehead while he attempts to send some thread of comfort through the cold void of the Drift. Hermann’s fingers close white-knuckled around the top of his cane, propped up thoughtlessly against the stiff chair he has made home. If he can get one grounding thought, one familiar word, even a few seconds of a dream that is warm and far away-

Would they still sit together, he wondered, like they had before? Shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, heart to beating heart. Even in silence, even in the harsh glow of the television, wrapped in inane film dialogue that Hermann pretended to detest. He tries to picture it, Newton’s head on his leg, his feet dangling endearingly over the arm of the couch, his glasses pushed up onto his forehead, the warmth of him cradled close to Hermann’s belly.

It would be enough. For once in his life, it would be enough.

 

 

* * *

  


_It was cool to meet you, even if you were exactly like I expected you would be._

 

* * *

  


Hermann presses a neatly folded paper towel beneath Newton’s nose, wordlessly mopping up the blood that has begun its slow, thick crawl down his face. He places his other hand on Newton’s tattooed shoulder, grounding him. Hermann can sense the sharp spike of anxiety rising in Newt’s chest as clearly as though it were his own. Morning routines have changed, adapted, rearranged themselves to the newness of the situation, the fresh sets of things that neither were prepared for - would ever be prepared for. He bites his tongue against the barrage of anxiety that burns his throat like acid, swallows the bile with the grimace that threatens to muddle his sharp features. He tries to tell himself that a few residual nosebleeds are hardly a cause for concern, but the doubt lingers like early morning fog. Newton once said that he believed Hermann kept a silent catalogue of Newton’s various ailments and injuries for the sole purpose of fussing needlessly over them. Hermann will never admit that he is correct.

“Didn’t think I’d still get nosebleeds,” Newton mumbles, pouting with his face as well as the entirety of his sagging posture. He removes his glasses and lets his head hang forward, nudging with his bare toe the bottle of sedatives that has tumbled off at the nightstand at some point. The sun that falls in yellow squares across Newton’s pajama-clad legs is _too_ warm, artificial in a way that Hermann cannot place. He still does not seem to take up the right amount of space; even his clothes look too large, but he is there and that is _something._ Newton’s coffee, black and bitter and long-cold, sits on the nightstand beside Hermann’s equally cold cup of tea. His goofy _World’s Greatest Biologist_ mug dwarfs Hermann’s plain blue one. Quiet has become commonplace in the sanctuary of their home; Hermann almost misses the rock music, the shouting. Newton has become soft and subdued where once he had sparked, prickling, with electricity.

At least Newton is talking again, eating again, sitting up late to read when he is stressed and sleepless. There was a time, however long ago it seemed, that Hermann feared despite his calculated care Newton would not do any of those things. Now, he parks himself in front of his laptop until Hermann, hours later, has to steer him away delicately with hands on his tired shoulders and a whisper of a kiss against his aching head.

“You'll work yourself to death, Newton,” he says (almost every time, soft and slight, fragile and strange and dripping with love, like chiding clockwork). “My poor darling.” Is it the guilt, he wonders, that hurls Newton full force into any project he can get his hands on? The guilt or the need for any fleeting distraction? The speculation is sure to drive Hermann mad, but he finds he cannot stop his restless mind from chasing notions in fruitless circles. But Hermann loves him, still - yes, loves him (and _fiercely_ ) - every version of him.

The war-free world waits outside their door, poised and eager to burst into life and set itself in motion, but Hermann climbs back onto his side of the bed, folding his spindly limbs beneath the covers. If he indulges Newton’s tendency to stay in bed until the last moment, they may be late for their weekly appointment with the therapist; but nothing seems quite as sweet as stretching the morning as far as it can go.

“Gimme your leg, Herm,” Newton says. “I saw the way you were limping when you got up.”

Ordinarily, Hermann would have propped his bad leg across Newton’s lap and welcomed the massage up the length of his leg and over the pointed ache that settled deep in the bones of his hip. Had it been a particularly bad day, Hermann even would have humored Newt and allowed him to paint his toenails with a surprisingly minimal level of protest. Instead, he shakes his head and reaches for Newton with outstretched arms, threads his fingers through the mess of hair that tickles his chin.

Hermann wants to laugh. The fuzzy remnant of the ghost Drift hums between them, familiar and warm. The sheer dizzying relief of it is enough to make Hermann burst nearly into breathless laughter, but his thin lips quirk instead into the tiniest of fond smiles. Newton's heart thuds against his chest, hammering dutifully against Hermann’s own heart.

He wants to be able to say with any semblance of certainty that the nosebleeds will stop, that the nightmares will stop, that their lives might go on as they’d hoped; but Hermann is slowly coming to terms with the fact that there are things - _important_ things - that he will not,  _cannot_  know. Neither can he offer any concrete, evidence-based assurance to Newt, who knows quite well that Hermann does not know, and loves him anyway. He does not have to say it. He never did.

One day at a time, Hermann thinks, is perhaps not such an agonizing way to live.


	2. i am listening to hear where you are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not much to say about this one, other than that i'm surprised i got this update out so fast

It is still and dark when Newton bolts rigidly upright, heart squeezing and threatening to burst inside his tattooed chest. The bedroom air is cool against the sheen of sweat that covers his bare skin, and he fails to suppress a shiver. He screws his eyes shut tight, fights to steady the breaths that come in too-loud gasps and almost-sobs.  _It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real-_

But it  _was_ real, at one point so long gone that it would have been better to keep it buried. His own nightmares are frightening enough to face, but lately, Hermann’s have started to slip through the cracks, fed to him along the ever-strengthening bond between them. At least Newt’s nightmare are just that-  _his_ , property he did not wish to own, spectres like friends with which he had once been close. With Hermann’s, though, there is no sure-fire way to prepare for what he might find there.

Newt opens his eyes and strains through the darkness until the jut of Hermann’s shoulder materializes, smooth and pale and familiar. Hermann used to sleep stock-still on his back, slender hands folded across his belly, until Newt poked fun at him for it (“What, are we in a morgue?”). Now he fears that Hermann can hear his heart racing wildly out of control the way he can feel Hermann’s heart pulsing steadily in the back of his mind. Years ago, he might have said it was improbable, but all the post-drift weirdness they’ve been working through has cracked any improbabilities wide open.

Newt swings his legs over the edge of the bed and eases himself out of the sheets tangled around his upper half, grateful that he doesn’t have to extract himself from the tensile strength of Hermann’s arms for fear of waking him. The very last thing he needs is for Hermann to come fussing after him; the man could easily make a career out of worrying.

The stumble out of the bedroom and down the hallway is normally an easy task, but Newt finds it difficult when his mind is still reeling from the lingering shadows of his nightmares. Seeing himself from a vantage point other than his own has shaken him up, like floating outside his body and being forced at metaphorical gunpoint to watch himself die. That was his first indication that he was watching the world come to its horrific end through Hermann’s eyes. Somehow, that makes the entire sequence so much more harrowing to replay as he creaks open the door to their study and settles himself in the leather desk chair.

They have been inside each other’s heads, yes, but never dreams. Never nightmares.

In the warm yellow of the desk lamp, Newt pulls a piece of paper from the drawer and nabs a pen from Hermann’s pen cup. The leather sticks uncomfortably to the inked backs of his thighs. He scribbles Scunner, Leatherback, Onibaba. A photograph of he and Hermann watches the lazy lines weave their way across the page. Newt is grinning, elated, breathless in the middle of a wheezy laugh. His sunglasses look ready to tip sideways off the bridge of his nose; and Hermann’s thin lips are quirked in a crooked smile, his gentle gaze fixed squarely on Newt. Newt remembers it clearly- of course he does, how couldn’t he? It is Boston, just before the hurried blur of the press tour began. When Newt reaches back through his sun-tinged sepia memories, it is always Boston. He catalogs every step they take, filing them away in his heart to keep the darkness from settling back in.

Newt pops a painkiller from the little orange bottle stashed in the side drawer in anticipation of the headache building behind his tired eyes. Before, the ghost-Drift was a pleasant hum, steady and certain like their heartbeats wound fatefully together. Tonight, it is sharp and erratic, a black hole expanding and threatening to collapse and swallow the both of them whole. For the first time since they Drifted, Newt is afraid of it.

Hermann is suffering, too; quietly, yes, but his pain weighs heavy at the front of Newt’s mind. They are so small in the face of something so massive, crammed infinitely into their heads and swirling inside them.

He swallows another pill.

Newt is halfway through Knifehead, squished into the corner of the page, when Hermann appears in the dark of the doorway. His hideous plaid robe hangs hastily from his frame, bunched up in the middle where he’s tied it much too quickly. He catches the door frame with white knuckles, and Newt’s heart lurches uncomfortably between his lungs. Hermann’s haunted face is washed out in the light, brown eyes searching forlornly for Newt.

“Herm, where’s your cane? Hey,  _hey_ -” He jumps to his feet, nearly knocking back the chair, but Hermann has already hurled himself forward bravely, wobbling a determined trajectory in Newt’s direction before Newt can shout at him to stay where he is. They meet each other in the middle, Newt catching Hermann around his slender waist and Hermann flinging his arms around Newt’s neck with reckless, heartbreaking abandon. Newt feels Hermann’s leg trembling as sure as if it were his own leg and brings the both of them to the ground as best he can manage. Newt settles carefully between Hermann’s legs. His hands fly to Hermann’s right hip, the skin waiting there warm beneath his dressing gown.

“Newton,  _please_ -” Hermann begins, but he’s as out of breath as Newt is terrified, and he doesn’t protest beyond a poorly-concealed grimace when Newt rearranges Hermann’s leg to a more comfortable position. His fingers prod the jut of Hermann’s bad hip with the methodical care of a skilled professional masseuse, but it takes every ounce of Newt’s quickly-waning self control not to instead take him by his bony shoulders and give him a good, hard shake.

“What were you thinking?”

“I was afraid for you-”

“Like  _hell_ you were, you could’ve hurt yourself! What if I wasn’t in here, huh? What if I was across the house and you  _fell_ and I didn’t know? What would you do then? Just lay there and wait for me to maybe, just maybe, fucking find you after god-knows-how-long? You seriously could’ve hurt yourself. Jesus  _fuck_ , Hermann, don’t you ever think-”

Newt presses his thumb into the hollow beside Hermann’s hip bone much harder than he intended, and Hermann wrenches his hand from the depths of his dressing gown, scrambling as far backwards as he can manage before a cramp seizes his hip. Newt recoils, guilt and sickening shame rising sour in his throat, burning like bad whiskey at the hurt sag that possess Hermann's face. They stare at each other for the briefest of moments, the sudden spike of ghost-drift tension snapping almost audibly in the newly created space between the two.

"Shit, Herm, I..." Newt feels the quiver of his bottom lip, the twinge in his head like the point of a knife needling his temples. He scoots an inch closer to the man sprawled on the area rug in front of him, fighting desperately to convey to him everything that has been troubling his head for the past several days, hours, minutes.  _Please, Hermann, tell me you feel this- me?_

Hermann’s hands, wide and flat, come to settle delicately on either side of Newt’s head, and Newt is left with no choice but to stare directly into Hermann’s bloodshot eyes.

“ _Shh_ ,” Hermann soothes, tilting Newt’s head forward to rest their foreheads together. “I was there. I was there with you- No, no, it’s alright, darling.”

“You were there,” Newt rasps, breaking free of Hermann’s gentle grasp to gather him in his arms, press his face into the warmth of Hermann’s neck, and rub his fingers along the stubbly grain of his undercut.  _Fuck. Of course you were there, it was your nightmare._  “I’m such a dick. I wanted to protect you, to- to-”

“Nonsense. I am rather well aware that this entire Drift business has hardly been a walk in the park, as they say, but we saved the world, you and I. Together.”

“A whole _bag_ of dicks.” If Hermann minds the tear tracks Newt leaves to dry on his skin, he says nothing about it. Newt shifts slightly, tries to make himself taller, brings his hands up to smooth Hermann’s tousled bed head and trace the sharp, dear lines of his face. He feels Hermann’s hand across his back, love spanning the length of Knifehead’s likeness, covering his frantic heart.

“Hush now,  _Geliebte._ You are not alone, nor am I, so let us stop pretending we are, hm?”

Newt rises to his knees to tuck Hermann’s head securely beneath his chin, sympathetic cramp in his hip be damned, to cover him the best he can. The ghost-Drift settles, memories soft and slight as snow filling in the gaps.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on twitter @kaijubf !


	3. moonage wet dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten days is shaping up to be a far longer period of time than Newton Geiszler had anticipated. With Hermann away temporarily, sorting through the newness of the lingering Drift connection between them proves to be an experience he hadn't bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh there's masturbation/mentions of sex in this one just so you're aware before you continue on. i've never written anything along these lines before, so let me know if any of it comes off as clunky or awkward to read, i really do appreciate feedback !

It has been exactly ten days since Newt regrettably bundled Hermann off to Alaska for field work, dorky parka hood pulled up so that the fur around it framed his glum face (until Newt had wrapped a nice new scarf around him, effectively obscuring his downturned mouth as well as the blush that crept steadily across his cheeks when Newt sent him off with a kiss on his nose). If someone were to ask Newt, he would shrug and say, "Oh, I dunno- a week?" He knows full well how long it has been since his last lingering glance at Hermann's retreating form.

“Field work, yes, though I assure you, Newton, I won't enjoy one single instant of the drudgery,” Hermann had insisted, voice lilting _just so_ in a tease that only Newt would ever listen closely enough to catch. Newt had fiddled needlessly with the front of Hermann's ridiculous coat, smiling fondly all the while. Hermann's thin lips had twitched, quirked into the charming ghost of a smile that nearly burst Newt's heart. He had managed to see Hermann off without making too large of a scene (a feat Hermann would have no doubt called “bordering quite on the side of the miraculous”), but there was no concealing the ache that needled the both of them at having to part.

Since the not-so-end of the world, whatever lingered between them had only grown stronger, nearly tangible, even. They had been in each other's heads, after all. There was no denying that, no denying _each other_. Everything still felt new and unbearably exciting, seeing things through this Drift-tinted lens; and it was heart wrenching to be separated so soon in the face of some deep and visceral need to stay in close proximity. They felt it in their chests, equal and opposite, separate and irreversibly together.

Newt tries to discern if this was how all Jaeger pilots felt, how they adapted and went about their daily lives; or if the intensity of it all was due in part (or perhaps, almost in  _whole_ ) to the fact that they had Drifted with a Kaiju. The pilots he sees, however little he sees of them, appear fairly well-adjusted, though the things a person stores up in their heart can be so vastly dark and unknowably dangerous.

It has been ten days since Hermann’s regrettable departure. It has been precisely one day since Newt learned that, despite the physical distance between them, Hermann is not quite as far as they’d thought. Newt had been tossing fitfully in the night, succeeding in doing nothing but wrapping himself in a tangle of sheets in a bed that felt far too large for him, when a new sensation prickled at the back of his mind, not unwelcome. It was lungs, expanding and contracting and expanding again, filling his mind and his too-empty quarters and the hollows between his ribs. It was soft and warm and _home._

It was Hermann.

How exactly he knew this with such surety, he still can’t explain- even after he’s had the lengthy span of an entire day to turn it over in his head. Newt does know, however, that when he focused his breathing to match the feeling that pulled at his heart, the ghost-Drift fluttered like the dusty wings of a moth, slight and gentle but alive. He was the Drift, he was himself, he was Hermann all those endless miles away. He had felt so at peace, felt Hermann curled against his chest, the sweetest phantom limb.

It's the only thing he can think about for the entirety of the next day. Even when Tendo comes down to the half-occupied lab to inquire good-naturedly after a report, Newt’s eyebrows are knitted together in concentration so deep that he doesn't register Choi’s presence beside him until the man taps his shoulder and startles him embarrassingly to attention. As far as Newt can hypothesize, there has to be a way to trigger what remains of the Drift between he and Hermann. Of course, there is no way to say anything for sure, but how is he to know if he doesn't try every possible thing? Newt would have be a poor scientist indeed not to probe into the matter as much as he can. He tries thinking of a memory they share, conjuring a rose-tinted afternoon on which he'd managed to convince Hermann to have lunch with him. He attempts to call to Hermann with every tired fiber of his brain, his heart, his soul, but to no avail.

 _I just imagined it. Wishful thinking, I guess_.

Newt thinks to contact Hermann, to tap out a text and ask him if he felt anything similar the night before, but there is no way to word it that doesn't make him sound lonely and sleep-deprived so he stuff his phone into the back pocket of his jeans with a sigh.

_I had no idea how tough this was gonna be. He hasn't even been gone for three days and I'm already moping._

He is fatigued when he returns to his quarters in the evening, unable to keep himself from wracking his brain for any last minute solution in spite of the growing disappointment he feels. Newton Geiszler was never one to give up on anything. Failing to come up with any solid information about whatever it was that he’d experienced the night before was almost like giving up on Hermann himself somehow, as irrational as that sounded when Newt thought it over.

He should shower. He should do the research he's been putting off. He should crack open a beer and make something quick to eat so he isn't fueled purely by caffeine. Instead, all he can do is lie flat on his back and stare up at the ceiling.

Thoughts of Hermann have been rattling around aimlessly in his head (and his heart) all day- even more so than usual, as embarrassing as it is to admit. Newt wants to call him, just for a moment, to catch the dry affection in his voice, maybe steal a whisper of a kiss from him, dangling sweetly at the end of a sentence. He fights the urge, pushing it back with both metaphorical fists and leaning up to set his phone out of reach. If he does perhaps call, it is late enough that Hermann might be sleeping and let his plea for attention go unanswered. But then again, if Hermann is awakened by it after all, he might answer with the low husk to his voice that drives Newt absolutely over-the-edge crazy- His fingers twitch, and the longing is nearly enough for him to grab for his phone.

When Newt caves and lets his fingers slip below the slight dip of his hip bones, when he takes himself in all-too-eager-hand, he feels suddenly as if he’s being watched. He wishes at once that he had called Hermann after all. He sighs, light and breathy. The sudden tug in the pit of his stomach, just above the heat pooling quickly between his soft thighs, brings to clouded mind the phrase _shared sensations._ He isn’t sure where he’s heard it or if he’s just now conjured it up in some unusual stroke of poetic inspiration, but the drift flares in a sudden hot spike and Newt finds himself biting much too hard on his bottom lip. There is no mistaking what he feels this time, unexplainable and altogether welcome.

Yes, _yes,_ that’s Hermann.

It is Hermann’s hot, open-mouthed kisses on his neck. It’s hearing his name come in hitched breaths and restrained gasps, the way his legs shake when they're wrapped securely around Hermann’s waist or slung carelessly up over one hip. Every passing second is the jut of Hermann’s hips, all angles, digging greedily into Newt’s curves,  bitten nails scrabbling for a firm grip on Newt’s hips (soft where Hermann, himself, is quite sharp), arch of his spine like fine art. It is the possessive splay of Hermann’s wide hand against his belly, the careful coaxing and caressing of long, nimble fingers he knows nearly better than his own.

He opens his reeling mind (and trembling legs) to it, all of it, hungry for more than the neural link can give him. Every nerve ending in Newt’s body is burning; it’s horrible and wonderful and absolutely overwhelming. Newt is on fire, the image of Hermann’s dear flushed face flashing urgently behind his squeezed-shut eyes. He wants to say something, to make any feeble attempt to reach out to the man he knows for certain is on the other end of the neural link, but all he can manage is a low croon. Newt flies careening over the edge, toes curling, hips bucking into his hand.

The connection explodes, fritzing like the frayed end of a live wire, when Newt, himself, does and sends stars shooting behind his eyes. As far as Newt knows, this could be the beautiful beginning of brain death, the fireworks of a supernova consuming him from the inside out. After all, humans were not meant to mind meld with monsters. But in the aftermath, Hermann’s pulse taps a steady, equally exhausted rhythm alongside his own, sparking up and down his nerves with the aftershocks. He should clean up- should _definitely_ clean up or have to face the consequences and the laundry room in the morning; but all Newt can do is roll onto his side, leaning spent into the satisfied warmth that hums along in calming waves across the Drift.


	4. do you really wanna go when you could do it with a rockstar?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt has always had music in his veins- and after all, the therapist did advise him to take up a hobby.

**2037.**

 

Hermann squints in the soft yellow of the lamp that sits on the nightstand and screws his face into the most delicate of scowls. Logically, he should have gone to sleep hours ago; he finds, more often than not, that a decent rest evades him most nights. To top it all off, his tea is ice cold and he has just discovered that there is a glaring typo in his crossword puzzle. _How unprofessional, how distracting-_

Newton shifts beside him, and Hermann holds his breath. Newt sleeps more than Hermann these days, bogged down by medications and sheer exhaustion, but Hermann still feels guilty waking him.

“Kaiju Effect,” Newt says suddenly, with the tone of someone who has just made an incredibly important discovery, and Hermann cannot keep from jumping at the gravelly sound of his voice.

“What- I thought you’d fallen asleep, Newt.” Hermann peers at him through the glasses that have slipped down the bridge of his nose. Newt’s hair is sticking up in every direction, eyes bleary from sleep though he is crackling with electricity.

“For my band. ‘Kaiju Effect.’ That’s pretty badass, right?”

Hermann’s expression softens almost immediately, and he sets aside the unfinished crossword puzzle to link pinky fingers with Newt. He regards him sweetly, unable to stifle the warm twitch of his lips. Newt had been dropping hints all week that he missed playing in a band, but Hermann has not thought much beyond the surface of it.

“Do you really expect this band of yours to take off, _liebling_?”

Newt shrugs the best he can manage considering he’s lying on his side beneath an obscene amount of blankets and squeezes their intertwined fingers. “Does it matter, though? It'll be fun. I mean, if you want me to keep plunking away at the keyboard in the house-”

Hermann leans down to press a kiss to his head, to let Newt’s hair tickle his face. Hermann can feel the fond grin on Newton’s face. Everyone who knows the two of them also knows he is absolutely, hopelessly smitten with Newt, and it's times like that very instant that he is consumed by it. Newt’s tattoos peek charmingly from beneath his old, impossibly soft MIT t-shirt; Hermann has to fight the urge to shove his hands beneath the fabric just to relish in Newt’s sleepy warmth, his _tangibility_.

Hermann still remembers with frightening clarity that first week-or-so long span of time after the Drift where, in the event that they were not somehow maintaining skin-to-skin contact, it felt as if someone had bashed in his head to carve half his brains from his skull. The migraines, the nightmares, the dizzying sickness that came with having another person in your head- Coupled with the physically painful longing that he felt for Newt to be near him at all times, all they had been able to do was curl into each other and ride the waves of something so much bigger than the both of them. They had not managed to do much other than exist in a frightened tangle of bare limbs until the effects began to weaken and they could survive being separated for longer than a few minutes at a time.

It was a wonder that either of them had survived the Drift itself, but the initial aftermath had been more terrifying than the actual experience. They had gotten through it, though, and here they were lifetimes later, impossibly together and irrevocably bound to the other. _That_ was the real Kaiju Effect.

“Herm?”

He snaps back quickly to his body, to the present, to the calm kindness of Newt’s knowing face and the homey glint of silver on his hand.

He needs this. Yes, there is a sturdiness to his shoulders that not even the most respected of professionals expected him to regain. Yes, Hermann’s teaching earns more than enough to support them both quite comfortably. Yes, yes, yes- but Newt is restless. Hermann can tell. It is not the way he bounces his leg when he's sitting at the desk in their study or the idle drumming of his fingers across the nearest surface. Those are things Newt does anyway. There is something in his eyes, something ricocheting off the walls of his head.

“You know I've grown rather taken with your songs, dearest,” Hermann says, sliding down to lay eye-to-eye with Newt and the faint blush that springs to his cheeks. “In all seriousness, I do want nothing more than for you to be happy.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hermann very nearly regrets his statement when he is awakened by a confident C note and a singsong proclamation of “KAIJU.” He thinks perhaps this will only happen once and closes his eyes again, but in fact, it repeats several times, each louder than the last. The clock he insists upon keeping reads 6:37 A.M. It is an early enough hour that the profanities that spring to his mind very nearly end up making it past his dry lips.

With a heavy sigh, Hermann extracts himself from the warmth of the bed and braces himself against his cane. Newt has his fair share of quirks, but being an early riser has not once been one of them. Hermann starts the slow descent to the main floor of their home and bites his lip to keep from shouting anything about his dear husband that he will certainly feel remorse for later.

Newt is stationed in the living room, clad in nothing but a t-shirt, a pair of boxers, and his combat boots (sans socks). The floor around the keyboard is littered with empty cups of coffee, both mugs and styrofoam cups. If Newt hears the rhythm of Hermann’s cane on the hardwood floor, he does not look up from the paper he’s scribbling on.

“Newton, for God’s sakes, do you have the slightest clue as to what time it is?”

Hermann drives the end of his cane into one of the styrofoam cups, and Newt’s head snaps up to look at him with his characteristic unbearably goofy grin. He eyes Hermann’s matching pajama set appreciatively, something half-joke and half-truth lingering dangerously close to the surface. If Hermann dares let his eyes linger too long, his anger will dissipate as quickly as it arose, so he reroutes and heads for the coffee maker.

“Mornin’, Herm!”

“‘Morning’, indeed,” Hermann grouches, hobbling around Newt’s setup and into the kitchen. “I _suppose_ I should be grateful I had the foresight not to have purchased you a bloody drum kit.”

Newt frowns and presses his defiant fingers hard on the keys, drowning out Hermann’s mumbling.

“Hermann  _ suuuuucks _ and has zero respect for the art of music just because he’s not a morning persoooon,” Newt drones, incredibly out of tune though Hermann strongly suspects that part is entirely on purpose. “He’ll say I make a fuss-”

“Newton, do keep it down before you rupture the eardrums of everyone in the neighborhood.” Hermann sets the bag of coffee beans on the kitchen counter with a heavy  _ thump, _ fighting to mask the smile that pulls at the corners of his mouth.

  
  


 


	5. if i held my breath, one of us would die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt finally manages to drag Hermann along to spend the day with him while Hermann ponders the intricacies, the ups and downs of their newly formed Drift connection and what it means for their future.

Newt has exactly enough space left between his upper thigh and the curve of his asscheek for another tattoo. He decides that he deserves it, since he did sort of save the world and all. Once he announces it rather proudly to the room (Hermann, of course, and the Kaiju entrails piled on the table), it’s impossible to get him to do anything else. Hermann has the good sense not to say anything negative about it, his strong feelings about both tattoos and kaiju aside, and the better sense to purse his lips together and roll his eyes behind his glasses rather than attempt to talk Newt out of it.

 _Typical Newton_ , he thinks. _Typical, impulsive Newton. At least it might keep him from leaning on my chalkboard and smudging my formulas._

It does just that, Newt hunching over the clutter on his desk with unbreakable focus, leaving Hermann to ponder his equations in long-awaited peace. He glances over a few times to study the way Newt’s shirt stretches between his shoulder blades, to attempt to make some rational sense of the infuriating, endlessly fascinating man he’s been forced into close quarters with. The man he drifted with. He would do it all again without a moment's hesitation if it might restore whatever connection they'd had in the haze of time that followed.

He had thought, for that seemingly endless stretch of those few days just after their Drift - when it burned not to be near each other, ached and needled at his insides not to have his fingers in contact with Newt’s inked skin - that perhaps it might be the push they needed, to propel them both into the proverbial leap that appeared to be their next logical step; but neither of them had spoken of it after they'd adjusted enough to stand being apart for longer than a few minutes. The quiet kisses, gentle caresses the two had exchanged where packed neatly into a box and stored in some dark corner of their shared space. They had simply shifted back into the comfort of routine, of busywork, of trying to figure out what to do with what remained of the world, and those feverish days were lost to the comfortable silence they fell into.

It is what he deserves, Hermann supposes, after sending mixed signals for over a decade, born entirely of confusion and his own frustration with himself.

He sighs and turns away.

When Newt slaps down his design on Hermann’s desk, drafted and finalized in careful black ink lines in an impressive three hour time span, he's grinning and all but bouncing on his boot-clad heels. Hermann raises an eyebrow and sets his notebook aside to look it over.

“I must say, Newton, I always seem to forget that you're artistically inclined.”

“ _Aw_ , thanks, Herm! That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Get your coat, I wanna get down there before it gets too late.”

Hermann sputters briefly and pushes his glasses up the slope of his nose. “Wh-”

“Yeah, c'mon. Come sit with me. No, no- hey, quit making that face! It'll be, what, five hours tops? What else do you have to do today? Do you really think they’re gonna need us around here? Face it, Herm, we’re on borrowed time ‘til the PPDC gives our asses the boot, so playing a little hooky isn't gonna hurt us.” Newt can sense that Hermann is fighting the very beginnings of a smile and fumbling to conjure a plausible excuse, so he grabs Hermann’s parka off the coat hook by the door and tosses it to him. “I'll buy you a smoothie for your troubles.”

 

* * *

 

It’s not that the tattoo parlor intimidates Hermann exactly, but he does feel he sticks out like a sore thumb against the edgy interior decor and loud music. Newt, quite the contrary, lights up the second he struts through the door, Hermann in tow. He waves at the artist behind the counter, flashing her a toothy grin.

“Lucy! I brought Hermann along! Be nice, though- poor guy’s never been in a tattoo shop in his whole life.”

Lucy, her bright purple hair pulled into a bun on top of her head, settles a tattooed hand on her hip and studies Hermann. The wings of her black eyeliner look sharp enough to puncture a balloon and despite her smile, her thorough appraisal intimidates Hermann. “So _this_ is the lab partner! I knew he'd be cute,” she says, turning to Newton, “but you didn't tell me he had that old college professor charm!”

Hermann's mouth falls ajar and he glowers at Newt's guilty smile. “What have you been saying to people, Newton? I don't think it's quite fair to give strangers preconceived notions of-”

“Oh, hush!” Lucy shuts him down not unkindly and points to a chair beside the bench. “Make yourself comfy, lab partner. Y'know, all I hear is ‘Hermann this’ and ‘Hermann that’ and "You won't ever guess what _Hermann_ did-”

“ _Anyway_ , about the tat- I brought the design.” Newt produces the paper from his jeans pocket, effectively turning Lucy’s attention from Hermann and saving the both of them any further embarrassment. Hermann seats himself in the chair, leaning his cane against the side of it while Lucy bubbles over Newt’s drawing.

Hermann sips noisily from the extra-large, much-too-thick smoothie cup, averting his eyes politely when Newt not-so-politely whips his pants off and flings them in Hermann’s general direction.

When Newt is finally settled on his stomach across the bench as comfortably as he can manage, he fixes his attention on Hermann and reaches for the cup.

“Just one? When I said I’d buy you a smoothie, I figured I’d get one too.” Hermann eyes the lines of the transfer on Newt’s leg, watches Lucy settle herself on a stool on the Newt's other side. The tattoo gun hums to life in her blue-gloved hand. Newt doesn't even flinch when the needle makes contact with the soft skin on the back of his thigh.

“Newton, I know for a fact that you would drink too much and have to stop the session to use the restroom, thereby prolonging-”

“That's my bad decision to make, buddy, gimme that.”

The tattoo artist looks up from where she's been jabbing color into the fresh kaiju on Newt’s thigh just long enough to shoot Hermann a sympathetic glance. Newton takes a long sip, the obscene sound prompting Hermann to roll his eyes.

 

* * *

  

“How do you feel about your first tattoo, Hermann? You think you want one of your own?” Newt hands the nearly-empty cup back to him and leans his chin in his hand. He's getting restless after nearly four hours stretched on his stomach, and it's killing him not to be able to bounce his leg. Hermann frowns at the lack of smoothie that he has been left with, but takes a sip anyway.

“I still can't rationalize the appeal of putting yourself through the procedure. And then there's accounting for the risk of infection, which I am quite surprised you've never wrestled with, considering the amount of times you've done this.”

“I don't get infections because I don't get tattoos in shitholes, Herm. Some things never change, huh, Mister Glass-Half-Empty?" Newt pokes him good-naturedly, and then they lapse into quiet for a few minutes. "There's a really good pho place- uh, a few blocks from here,” Newt says over the buzz of the tattoo gun, scratching his stubble. “And I think we should get dinner after we're done.”

Hermann quirks an eyebrow at Newt. “Dinner?”

“Well, sure. This is hardly my idea of a good first date, y’know?” He crosses his arms and rests his chin on them, eyeing Hermann carefully.

“ _Date?_ ” He says the word like he's allergic to the very idea of it. The tips of Hermann’s ears go bright red and he wrings his hands in his lap. “Ah, well I- I don't-”

“Herm. Just give me, like, _one_ chance and if you still think I'm - what did you say? “An insufferable creature”? - then we can call it even and go back to hating each other.”

“I don't hate you, Newton.”

Hermann still remembers the nights in his office when he’d open the very top drawer of his desk to look at the pictures that Newt had sent him, to trace the curve of his cheeks, his wide grin, to fantasize about at last getting to meet him, how well they’d get along. Newton Geiszler was brilliant, a prodigy, a genius, and yet Hermann’s reasons for wanting to meet him had been nothing but selfish even then. He should have seen it long ago, perhaps, but the thought feels so sudden, so utterly unaccounted for, that he pushes it away as fast as it flutters in the pit of his stomach.

The gun buzzes, deafening in the sudden silence, and Newt tries in vain to catch Hermann’s downturned eyes. Some quietly starving part of Hermann pushes him ever-closer to the proverbial ledge. He teeters, dangerously close to falling (for Newt, all over again, unfortunately).

The tattoo artist wipes the last of the excess ink away, shuts the gun off, and bandages the back of Newt’s thigh. He's grinning even as he struggles to maneuver himself off the vinyl-upholstered bench. Hermann offers his arm to steady him, though Newt gets his bearings quickly, pays for his tattoo, and bids Lucy a fond farewell with the promise to return.

Newt leads the way down the block past little independent boutiques and restaurants, still grinning, limping slightly with the fresh sting of his latest triumph. He keeps pace with Hermann easily, instead of his usual struggle not to leave the man straggling behind him.

The pho restaurant is a good deal more neon than perhaps it should have been, with colors glowing blue and purple and pink along the glass partitions between booths and around the curve of the bar at the back of the space. Even the flashy “WE ARE OPEN” in the front window seems lost swimming among the rest of the lights reflecting from the inside. Newt holds the door open for Hermann, quirking a crooked smile at him, and Hermann wrinkles his nose in delicate distaste at the atmosphere. The host seats them at a booth, and upon glancing at the vinyl Newt mutters a quiet “Ah, fuck,” that almost prompts Hermann to laugh out loud. Newt makes a valiant effort to slide smoothly into the seat but finds he can only inch to the side to avoid further irritating the fresh tattoo on the back of his leg. Hermann, on the other hand, sits gracefully and pops open the menu in one surprisingly fluid motion.

“Are you laughing, Hermann? Just because I can't see you doesn't mean I don't hear you- _Ow, shit_.”

“I assure you I am doing nothing of the sort. Really, Newton, what do you take me for?”

“Yes you _are_ , you stuffy old bastard! You're _laughing_ at me!”

“I'm only a few months older than you. I am _hardly_ a ‘stuffy old bastard’, as fond of the sentiment as you appear to be.” Newt nudges Hermann’s leg with the toe of his boot under the table, and Hermann lowers the menu just enough to look over it (and his horrible, hideous glasses) at Newt. His eyes crinkle at the corners, giving away the smile concealed behind the laminated pages. “Honestly, Newton, you're acting like a child.”

Newt reaches across the table and swats the menu out of Hermann’s hands, relishing in the way the hollows of his face, the lines of his wry smirk, are cast in purple in the fluorescence that thrums along the glass beside their booth. The promise of a snarky remark dangles at the edges of Newt's mouth. "C'mon, Herm-"

The waiter materializes beside them, and they break eye contact. Hermann clears his throat. Newt adjusts his glasses.

“ _Pho bò tái_ for me,” Hermann says stiffly, collecting their menus and stacking them together to hand to their server.

“Yeah, and uh, I'll have the _phở tôm_.”

The faint hum of music playing over the speakers keeps them company as Newt pulls his phone from his pocket and busies himself with checking emails. Hermann pulls a pen from his pocket and scrawls equations on a napkin There is an empty space between the curve of his ribcage and the tissues of his lungs, and it aches almost tangibly. He wonders if Jaeger pilots experience this, if they are so unsure of what to do with the Drift and in its wake that they let it fall by the wayside once it's served its purpose. Hermann supposes they can't let go of it, much as he cannot, much as he suspects Newton can't either, despite his well-performed efforts to appear otherwise unaffected.

Hermann tries to reach out to him, stretching a phantom limb across the table to tap Newt’s head and stir the neural link that has settled and grown stagnant in the last weeks since the Drift. Newt doesn't look up from his phone and Hermann sags slightly against the cheap vinyl of his seat. He picks his pen back up and resumes the string of numbers that he marches resolutely across the napkin.

Newt only sets his phone aside when their bowls arrive, and he leads eagerly over the food. Hermann takes a tentative sip, but the rich broth scalds his lips. It's far too hot to eat right away, but it doesn't stop Newt from digging in. The steam fogs up his glasses as he slurps the noodles from his spoon, and Hermann allows himself a smile.

 

* * *

 

 “That wasn't so painful, was it?” Newt asks, flipping the light switch on the wall and watching the lab flicker to life around him.

“No, I suppose it wasn’t,” Hermann says dryly, shrugging off his parka to hang it up. Newt leans against the wall and crosses his arms, green eyes following Hermann’s movements as he straightens his sweater and adjusts the sleeves of his jacket. Newt opens his mouth to say something, but closes it again and presses his lips together. Hermann has to keep his eyes from settling on Newt’s lips and trains them instead on the spot just between his eyes. “What? Is something troubling you?”

“I guess I just- I thought that- ah, never mind. It's nothing. Thanks for tagging along today. You're not half bad company once you get that stick out of your ass.”

“And you aren't quite so terrible, yourself,” Hermann teases, but it falls flat and sits open in the faint hum of the lab. He should, logically, return to his desk. Retire to his quarters for the evening. He should. But he remains standing, braced against the stable surety of his cane, beside Newt. What does he say now? That he wants to “hang out” again? There is no protocol for for these things, no standard procedures for Hermann to fall back on when all else fails him.

Newt smiles, tight-lipped and strained, before he stretches his arms up over his head. He makes a big performance of yawning, tilting his head back and opening his mouth too wide. He glances at his wrist, inspecting the hands of a watch that is not there. “Guess I oughtta call it a night, huh?”

“Newton.”

Newt lets his arms fall lazily to his sides, taps the floor with the toe of his boot. “I still don't know what they're gonna do with us, y’know? Not like there's any more kaiju events to predict, but I guess there's plenty of guts for me to poke around in now if they'll-”

Hermann steps forward and cuts him off, finally, _finally_ kissing him. He could call it scientific curiosity when it was all said and done, call it anything other than what it was, but after this he knows that Newton Geiszler would never believe him. Hermann’s mouth is closed and Newt’s is wide open, halfway through a sentence and caught entirely off guard. The kiss is off-center and not unlike a the first stutter of a word in an unfamiliar language, but it does nothing to deter Hermann from brushing Newt’s fingers with his free hand. He expects Newt to pull back, to shout at him for misreading the situation (for getting the wrong impression from the last ten years they’ve spent together); but it takes Newt a split second to catch on and tilt his head, smashing their noses together and knocking his glasses askew. It slides seamlessly into the rhythm of a second much smoother kiss, Hermann dropping his cane carelessly to press his hand to the back of Newt’s head. It feels like Drifting all over again, dangerous and crackling like a live wire, like they've done this thousands of times over.

Hermann pulls back just enough to exhale shakily, their noses barely touching, Newt’s own breath warm against his face. He is afraid to look at Newt, afraid of the rejection he might find written on his features, but he can't help himself. Newt settles his arm against Hermann’s shoulder, traces the shell of Hermann’s ear with his finger and watches Hermann’s face flush violently. He is grinning, hopelessly, wonderfully grinning, and for once in their lives, neither of them can grasp the words they want to say. Newt wraps his other arm around Hermann’s waist, supporting him and pressing them close together. His eyes flicker to Hermann’s parted lips before he hoists himself up on his toes to dart in for another kiss, hearts pounding through their shirts and in each other’s heads.


	6. this is what it is that pulls me through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two out of two scientists agree that nothing quite rewards a long day at work like a quiet night in.

Hermann is already tucked neatly beneath the throw blanket on the couch when Newt flings himself down beside him, balancing a precarious tower consisting of a comically large bowl of popcorn, a can of beer, and a glass of red wine. Hermann plucks the wine delicately from Newt’s hand by the stem of the glass and settles in against him. Newt sets the bowl on his knees and fumbles for the remote control.

It still feels new, in a surreal and entirely exciting way, to have their own home. Not an apartment or a cramped room in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, but a house with a big, open kitchen and a winding staircase and a study. The real estate agent had tried to talk them into a cheaper house, smaller, a few blocks away, but the way he’d seen Hermann’s dark eyes lighting up when he caught sight of the garden just beyond the sliding glass door had sealed the deal for Newt. (The fact that Hermann didn't mind Newt’s comandeering of the garage for his band’s new headquarters was just a sweet, sweet bonus.)

“Hope you don't mind another  _ Godzilla _ rerun, Herm,” Newt says, starting up the dvd and cracking open his beer. “I  _ really _ don’t wanna go digging through the last couple of boxes for something else. Can’t believe the fuckin’ cable guy still hasn’t shown up.” He props his arm up over the back of the couch, not quite touching Hermann but close enough that he can drop it to settle across the man’s shoulders once the movie gets going. He expects a fight, an argument, some short-lived bickering about Newt’s choice in film ( _ film -  _ Hermann always calls it a  _ film _ and it’s equal parts pretentious and grating, and rather endearing). Instead, Hermann swirls the wine in his glass and shifts closer, the prominent angle of his shoulder poking Newt’s armpit.

“Hey, what's up? You've been really quiet since you got home.”

Hermann stares balefully into his wine, regarding it before taking a sip and exhaling the ghost of a sigh. It's strange to see him in something other than a matched pajama set (and almost stranger still that he hasn't said more than a few words since returning from the lab), but Newt likes the sight of Hermann in his old band shirt and worn plaid pajama pants too much to hazard bringing up his unusual state of dress.

“I've just had a bit of a long day, is all.”

His long, angled face is washed out in the bluish glow of the television, but the circles beneath his eyes are canyons miles and miles deep. Shared heaviness weighs on Newt’s mind like a wet wool coat, and he frowns.

“This isn't like you. Something happened, didn't it?”

“I assure you, there's hardly cause for concern. How was practice? I am uncertain about that drummer’s ability to-”

“Bullshit, Hermann. Something's wrong, and I can  _ feel _ it so don't lie. That doesn’t work anymore. Don’t change the subject. Just talk to me.”

Hermann purses his lips together, defeated, and gives in with a relaxed sag of his shoulders.

“I received an email from my father just before I retired from the lab for the day.”

Newt's jaw tightens. If Hermann hears him spit “Bastard” under his breath, he doesn't show any sign of acknowledgement.

“He had a rather colorful assortment of things to say about my ‘lifestyle choices’,” Hermann continues, resentment spilling through his gritted teeth. “I don't doubt that he's caught wind of our good news since those louses from the press saw fit to plaster us across every bloody magazine in-”

“It's alright, Hermann. Hey, c’mon, look at me. It doesn't matter what he thinks.”

Hermann finishes his wine with an impressive swig and sets the glass aside, lips set in a hard line. Ah, the infamous beginnings of the old Gottlieb Cold Shoulder. “You’re right. He's not  _ your _ father, so I suppose it does not much matter to you.”

Newt swallows an exasperated sigh and grabs for the jut of Hermann’s hips, turning him to bring them face to face. “That's not what I meant, and you know that. So he's not happy for us, the shitty old fart. Did you really think he'd have anything nice to say, though?”

“You're putting me very much at ease, Newton,  _ thank you _ .” Hermann moves as if to turn away once more, but Newt pulls him carefully from under the blanket and into his lap. Hermann frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. “It might behoove you to take someone's feelings into consideration before you see fit to open your mouth.”

“Oh, don't get all sassy. Look, I know you aren’t a big fan of being in the public eye like this, but we saved the world, Herm. Not.once, but  _ twice.  _ That's our life for now - press and interviews and ‘Keeping Up With The Gottlieb-Geiszlers’,” he says with a chuckle, trying in vain to coax a smile from Hermann.

“We aren't married yet. Imagine the field day they'll have when they find out we're eloping. Such a pity to deprive them of a public ceremony to photograph.”

“It’ll die down eventually. Excitement always does. And I know your father is a huge dick and you like him even  _ less _ than- well, thats an understatement.” Hermann scoffs quietly, but Newt carries on. “You know what I'm trying to say. Let him go ‘til he's blue in the face- what’s he gonna do? Realistically? I'm genuinely curious. He wouldn't fly all the way out here and come pounding on our door just to tell you he - wrongly - disapproves of your life.”

“He very well might.”

“And then what?”

“Oh, I suppose he'll….,” Hermann trails off, eyebrows meeting in a furrowed crinkle.

“He wouldn't get past the porch. I'd knock him out cold,” Newt boasts, settling his hands on the small of Hermann’s back and sliding him closer.

“He's hardly a  _ small _ man, Newton. I daresay you're severely underestimating the size of-”

Newt shuts him up with a kiss, more than willing to face whatever flustered protest that might follow. When he pulls back, Hermann’s pink-tinged features twist into a mock look of annoyance, a poor shadow of the real thing.

“I could beat the shit out of Lars,  _ easy.  _ Maybe he's bigger than I am, sure, but if he thinks he can come around and upset my fiance, he's got another thing coming. Fuck that guy. What does he know anyway? He’s just a bully, and he’s got real nerve treating you like shit all your life and-”

Newt can feel his blood pressure rising dangerously high at the mere thought of Lars-Fucking-Gottlieb, so he's more than grateful when Hermann threads his long fingers through his hair and kisses his lips sore. His hands slide easily up the back of Hermann’s t-shirt ( _ his _ t-shirt, really, worn soft and familiar through all those late nights slogging through research and writing papers and dreaming about the man who kept him endlessly fascinated with his letters, his emails, his text messages) to settle on the warmth of Hermann’s bare skin.

Hermann breaks for air (for rest? To keep his head from spinning clean off his neck at the sheer dizzying pleasure that comes with kissing and riding the ghost-Drift all at once?) and settles his head on Newt’s shoulder where he can brush his nose against Newt’s neck. Light as the gesture may be, it sends Newt’s pounding heart leaping into his throat. The fuzzy remnants of the Drift buzz to excited life, like someone flipped on a light switch or tossed a stone into the stillness of a pond. He traces a finger down the curve of Hermann’s spine, the dips of his vertebrae, and Hermann shivers beneath his hands, shifting forward to press himself closer.

“You would do that for me, Newton?” Hermann mumbles against Newt’s throat, his voice low, Newt’s name rolling off his tongue like a purr. Newt lets his grip fall back to Hermann’s hips, drumming his fingers against the beloved angle of them playfully.

“Anything you want, Herm.”

“Anything?” The tone of Hermann’s voice is enough to have Newt shifting in his seat, subtle as he can manage with his fiance straddling him; but the mischievous glint in Hermann’s eyes when he straightens up to look at Newt is what sets his heart racing out of control. It’s not often that Hermann finds himself in such a mood, and Newt can’t quite mask his delight. Hermann presses a firm kiss to the hollow of Newt’s throat, and he has to keep from throwing his head back against the couch cushions.

“Anything,” Newt sighs, toying with the hem of Hermann’s shirt until he catches the hint and pulls it off, flinging it thoughtlessly onto the ground behind him. Newt wants to take a moment to enjoy the view, the pale skin and slender strength bathed in the television’s dim light, but Hermann scoots further to press their torsos flush together and wind his arms around Newt’s neck. On the television beyond his shoulders, Tokyo is being crushed beneath Godzilla’s feet, but Hermann grinds his hips down just enough to elicit a shameful squeak from Newt. He tilts his head for another kiss, nipping at Hermann’s bottom lip. If he opens his eyes, he'll still be able to catch a bit of the movie past the shape of Hermann’s face, but he's long past caring.

Hermann tastes always of oranges and english breakfast tea, and on this particular night, bitter red wine. There is nothing Newt loves quite as much. He fumbles to extract Hermann gently from his sweatpants without straining his bad hip, but Hermann swats his careful hands away and wrenches them off. Newt’s shirt goes next, pulled roughly over his head with reckless abandon that he previously didn't think Hermann Gottlieb possessed.

“ _ Ouch _ \- That was my ear!”

“Do stop that, you're going to spoil the mood,” Hermann grunts, rolling his hips into Newt’s and prompting him to grab hold of his ass. Newt smirks, dares to raise an eyebrow at the man he loves. He never tires of this, of Hermann, of sheer  _ wanting _ , of the rhythm they've written through the Drift. Hermann shivers, his whole body trembling slightly as he grinds against Newt,and it feels like fireworks exploding in some distant corner of his head.

“Seriously?”

“‘Seriously’ what?” Hermann grips Newt’s hair at the nape of his neck nearly hard enough to make him yelp, and Newt grits his teeth in a hiss. He is enjoying the greedy look in Hermann’s half-lidded eyes far more than he cares to admit even to himself. He digs his bitten nails into Hermann’s ass cheek in retaliation, earning him a strained sound from the back of Hermann’s exposed throat.

“We're seriously doing this right now? We were  _ just _ talking about your piece of shit father like five minutes ago.”

Hermann arches his back, tensing at the feeling of Newt’s finger pushing into him, moaning obscenely and dropping his head onto Newt’s shoulder. “Oh- oh, yes,  _ God _ , Newton- Yes, we are most certainly ‘doing this right now’.”

“You’re kidding me. If I would've known all it takes to get you to want me is threatening your garbage father, I would've done that years and years ago,” Newt teases. His laugh, short-lived, catches in his throat when Hermann’s hand dips between his thighs and closes around him. “Fuck, dude.”

Hermann whines pitifully as Newt eases a second finger into him, but it doesn’t stop him from rocking back into it. “I-  _ ah _ , I'm rarely given - mmm,  _ Newton -  _  to jests. I'm not ‘kidding you’.”

“I should've invited you upstairs-  _ shit _ ,” Newt manages, breathing hard. “That day, all those years ago when we met- I should've just-”

He knows that Hermann knows, that Hermann knows as well as he does exactly what he would have (should have) done, that there is no righting that wrong; but Newt can't keep the words from tumbling out of his mouth as Hermann gives his hand another expert twist. He curls his fingers inside Hermann, relishing in the utterly undignified sound he makes.

“ _ Newton,” _

_ “ _ It's just that your letters - oh, shit  _ Hermann _ \- they kept me-”

“As yours kept  _ me,”  _ Hermann mumbles, circling the pad of his thumb just beneath Newt’s head. Newt moans, overcome, but he doesn't want this to be finished. Not yet (not ever; he’d stay tangled in Hermann’s long limbs forever if he could, make a career of it and never retire). He pulls his fingers away, and Hermann whimpers but does not see fit to release his grip.

“Jesus, Herm - let's go upstairs, huh? You'll be more comfortable. Your hip-”

“My hip is  _ fine.  _ You've chosen a terribly inconvenient time to fuss over my ailments, as much as the sentiment is not lost on me.” Hermann grinds against Newt, places an imploring kiss at the corner of his mouth. “I want this. I want  _ you _ , Newton.”

The phrase alone, coupled with Hermann’s husky tone, is almost enough to send him spiraling into an orgasm despite the sympathy cramp he’s developed making a needling resurgence. Hermann strokes him gently, peppering his jaw with begging kisses. Newt shuts his eyes briefly, willing himself to hold out, to focus on anything else. “We gotta get upstairs, I need the-”

“I kept some in the drawer,” Hermann says, breathless, leaning over the arm of the couch to fumble the side table drawer open and paw through it urgently. He resettles himself in Newt’s lap, handing him a condom and flipping open the travel-sized bottle of lube. Hermann’s hands shake, his entire body trembling slightly, but they manage.

Newt guides Hermann onto him gently, hoping he won’t pick up on Newt’s slight hesitation, and feels immediately as if his mind might burst into a million little fragments. They shift into a rhythm easily, second nature like thinking, like breathing. Hermann rolls his hips, spurred on by a hunger that bites at Newt across the length of their neural link. He pleads with stunted kisses, begs in needy gasps, until Newt works a hand between them and finally, mercifully, takes Hermann’s cock in his unsteady hand.

Hermann comes quickly, gasping, high and strangled, in the sensitive space just beneath Newt’s right ear and leaving both their bellies a sticky mess. It's enough for Newt to follow, hands grabbing at Hermann’s back in a poor attempt to ground himself. They cling to each other in the ebbing waves of the aftershocks, drifting quietly, seeing flecks of stars laid out infinitely behind their closed eyes.

Newt reaches for the discarded throw blanket and drapes it over the both of them. He cradles Hermann against him, nuzzling the top of his head, sheltering him. He can think only of trudging up the stairs and falling into bed to fold the length of his body against Hermann’s. Newt doesn't need to say a word for Hermann to hear him.

“Shower first,  _ liebling _ . I insist.”


	7. travelogue i.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you / and that you are standing in the doorway
> 
> \- 
> 
> After saving the world the first time, Newt and Hermann are in high demand in academic circles and set off to speak about their work at a series of conferences.

Hermann insists on sitting by the window, muscling past Newt to claim the seat for himself before an argument can bubble up between them. He seats himself gracefully, straightening his sweater and brushing imaginary lint from the legs of his neat trousers as if the last thing on his mind is the way he'd nearly shoved Newton aside just seconds earlier.

“ _Dude,_ are you serious? You could've just asked me to sit there!”

“Newton, please. You know as well as I do that I must sit by the window so I don't get nauseous.”

“Oh, right, like I could somehow manage to forget you're afraid of planes,” Newt says, settling himself resignedly in the seat beside Hermann. Hermann turns up his nose and sniffs delicately, making a performance of turning to gaze out the window at the bustling airport.

“I am hardly _afraid_ of them! You are well aware that I tend towards motion sickness. I am merely taking the proper precautions.”

Newt unzips his carry on bag ( _their_ carry on bag, in reality, because Hermann had stuffed a few of his things into Newt’s bag and then refused to bring one of his own, deeming it unnecessary.) and digs through it for Hermann’s book of sudoku puzzles and the blanket Newt had the foresight to bring. He puts up the armrest between them and unfolds the garish kaiju-print blanket across both of their laps. Hermann doesn't look at him, but moves his arm to allow Newt the space to nestle into his side and takes the book from him with his other hand.

Hermann flips the book open, _clicks_ his pen. His hand shakes, only perceptible to the intimately-accustomed eye. He does not like to travel by air. If Newt didn't know this before, didn't manage to pick it up in the Drift, he knows it now. Hermann had spent the entire week bellyaching about the plane, grasping at straws in the shapes of alternate travel options. Even now, having taken one of Newton's pills as an attempt at preemptive anxiety relief, he is nothing short of on edge.

Newt’s phone chimes before Hermann can begin the first number (a 7, in the center grid of the topmost square), and he frowns, the lines on either side of his mouth deepening. The person across the aisle from them looks over disinterestedly.

“It would be in your best interest to silence that before take off,” he mumbles, shooting Newt a sideways glance from behind the almost comical roundness of his glasses.

“It's Tendo,” Newt says, like that somehow rights the wrong of having one’s notifications on despite the foreknowledge that it was expressly forbidden on a plane. “He said, ‘Have a good trip!’”

Hermann grunts in response, fingers tightening around his pen. The plane will be taking off soon, and then there will be the whole messy business of turbulence, and it’s enough to bring beads of sweat prickling to his high forehead. Newt shifts in his seat and holds the phone at arm’s length. “Here, get in this.”

“Newton-” Newt takes the picture before Hermann can finish scolding him, his mouth immortalized in all its grouchy glory, a stark contrast to Newt’s half-laughing blur of a smile. “Don't you dare send that to him.”

“Then let's take a better one.” He tilts his head up to catch Hermann in a kiss before he has the time to protest. Hermann, flustered and vaguely aware that the person across the aisle is full-on staring now, wrestles the phone from his hands before he can do it again. “ _Hermann!_ No, don't delete it! Lemme see!”

Hermann’s eyebrows pull together in a crinkle, his thin lips coming together in pursed concentration. He scrutinizes the photo in silence before handing the phone back. “That's acceptable,” he says at long last, the tiniest lilt of a tease hanging at the end of the words. He presses his lips to the top of Newt’s head turns back to his puzzle.

It's more than acceptable. Both their eyes are closed, heads tilted _just so_ like they were created for the express purpose of accommodating the peaks and valleys of the other’s profile. Newt grins, wriggling back into place beneath Hermann’s arm and tapping out a reply to Tendo. He can’t keep himself from studying the picture even after he’s sent it along, Hermann’s square jaw and long eyelashes, his own stubbled face and content expression.

_We fit._

 

* * *

 

Their hotel room looks out over the city below, every twinkling light a piece of the constellation mapped out in grids and blocks. Hermann stares at them through the gap in the curtains beyond the dark shape of Newton curled beneath the clean white sheets beside him. He snores gently, the rise and fall of his chest in sweet, unconscious sync with Hermann’s shallow breaths. Hermann has to close his eyes and turn away; he knows he loves him, quite fiercely, and there is no coming back from it.

When Hermann wakes groggy and disoriented, Newton is sitting upright,hunched forward, watching the pale afternoon unfold through the window. Hermann sobers immediately. Light falls in long square patches across Newton’s tattooed torso. Instead of rubbing the sleep from his eyes or moving to alleviate the slight pulling of the pain in his hip, Hermann remains still, fearing that even breathing too hard might alert Newton. He traces the convex curve of his back, the very slight bulge of his stomach where it sits just above the waist of his hideous patterned pajama pants. Newt scratches the stubble dotting his jaw, and Hermann nearly breathes in too sharply and gives himself away at the exquisite gentleness that hangs over him like a halo. Maybe that is just the sun combing through his unruly bed head. Hermann knows with unshakable certainty that he is seeing Newton in a different light, in the way he never would have allowed himself to before. It is not an effect of the Drift, a high to be ridden and then remembered fondly once it fades into something resembling the reverberating joy of a good memory. It stirs something long-asleep in the pit of his stomach. It frightens him. Newt raises his arms above his head to stretch and pop his joints. His green eyes fall on Hermann.

“Good morning,” Hermann whispers. His voice catches in his throat, and he wavers quietly, overcome.

Newt regards him for a fraction of a second, adjusting nearly imperceptibly to the vulnerable nakedness of Hermann’s face before diving back beneath the crisp coolness of the sheets and rolling onto his side to kiss Hermann. It was never Hermann’s intention to open his mind, his heart, his life to another person, but tangled in Newt’s arms and feeling the weight of Newt’s hand against the back of his head, he knows he cannot ever, _ever_ go back to the solitude he’d put up with before, convinced himself that he actually enjoyed.

Newt is the one to break the kiss and draw back to inspect Hermann’s face. Newt’s eyes are hazel, he observes with a thrill, and Hermann wants nothing more than to stay forever in the blessed space of Newt’s affection, to curl up in it.

“Good morning,” Newt says, still close enough that the movement of his lips brushes Hermann’s own and coaxes them into a smile. Hermann tangles his fingers hungrily in the short softness of Newt’s hair, pulling him against his sweetly aching chest. Even through the thin sheet that separates them, bunched sloppily around Hermann’s chest and draped over Newt’s hips, their bodies are warm and heavy with lingering sleep. When they break at long last for air, heads lolling forward to rest together, Hermann lets his fingers fall from Newt’s hair to his shoulders, strong and solid and inked.

“Good morning,” he mumbles, rolling Newt over onto his back, rumpling the sheets and twisting them around their legs. He dips his head to bite at Newt’s lips, the little breathy sound he makes lighting a fire between Hermann’s hips. They could easily spend the entire day (or perhaps the week, academic conference be damned) in bed and Hermann wouldn't utter one single complaint.

Kissing Newton is not a stutter, a hesitance like the one other person Hermann had ever dared to kiss (in college, and only once) - it flows through his body like a symphony, fills in the gaps where he falls short.

Newt slides his hands up over Hermann’s hips, beneath his pale blue pajama shirt, his flat belly, the slight bumps of his ribs, his chest. Hermann shudders pleasantly, feeling like his stomach has bottomed out and his insides have all been sucked clean out of him. Newt nips playfully at Hermann’s bottom lip and attempts to flip them, but Hermann has him pinned securely at the waist, between his skinny thighs. He laughs into the kiss, sloppy and open-mouthed. Hermann’s own chuckle, deep and throaty, turns to a moan when he fits their hips together and feels the hard line of Newton’s erection pressing against him insistently.

Newt manages to upright himself enough to mouth at the fluttering pulse beating in Hermann’s neck, threatening to bite but not daring to do more than graze his teeth over it. Hermann settles his hand comfortably between Newt’s thighs, the wide hand brushing him through the soft fabric of his pajamas prompting a needy groan. Newt can do little more than nose at Hermann’s exposed neck, tilting his hips up to meet the warmth of Hermann’s palm. Newton mumbles something against the skin there, something that feels stuck halfway between Hermann’s name and a whimpered plea.

“Yes, darling, I know,” Hermann mutters, voice dripping with mock sympathy. His nimble fingers slip easily past the waistband of Newt’s pajamas to grab at the soft skin of his ass and Newton, pink and flustered and sighing, throws his head back into the pillows when Hermann takes him roughly in his hand.


	8. no emotion worth having could call my heart its home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He reaches for Hermann’s hand and pulls it to rest palm-down over his thudding heart, over the wires that connect to the monitors that flank either side of the bed, and covers Hermann’s hand with his own.

Hermann crawls into the hospital bed by way of greeting. His joints ache, and the stinging pull from his hip to his toes makes him grimace, but he says nothing of it. Newton must sense it, somehow, feel the tight strain in his own leg the way he used to; neither talks about it. Newton shifts as much as he can manage, wordlessly allowing Hermann to slot himself carefully behind him, mindful of the tubes and wires that are nearly as much a part of him now as his tattoos. He scoots Newton back into the space between his legs, drapes his long arms around Newton’s small form, presses him gently into the shape of his chest.

Newton’s breathing evens out.

He reaches for Hermann’s hand and pulls it to rest palm-down over his thudding baby-bird heart, over the wires that connect to the monitors that flank either side of the bed, and covers Hermann’s hand with his own. He is small and strange beneath the harsh fluorescents, a warped fun house reflection of the man he’d been. He is quiet, delicate. Whether it is due to the medications that slow him or to something else, he cannot say. Hermann plants a kiss against his temple, counts every beat beneath his hand in his head until Newton’s erratic heart rate slows to match his own. Hermann counts the paper cranes they have been folding and lining up on every available surface. 

_Two hundred three, two hundred four, two hundred five._

He always brings origami paper, even on days like these, days that are darker and less hopeful. There are times when Newton does not remember him (or perhaps does not recognize him as _Hermann_ , just as someone who visits daily, someone who is kind to him), times when the things in his head still do not work the way they ought to; but even then, something buried deep in his heart still _knows_ Hermann. At least, that is what Hermann tells himself.

Today, mercifully, is not one of those days. It is not necessarily a Good Day - this, evident by the expression on Newton’s beloved face, the heavy slump of his back against Hermann’s front - but he had lit up when Hermann rounded the corner into the room and, thus, it is not a Terrible Day, either. At least Newton has his own room. The prying, pitying eyes of the staff are already more than Hermann can bear without the added watchfulness of a roommate. Newton shifts in Hermann’s arms, and everything rustles: the thin fabric of his hospital gown, the sheets, the blanket, the tubes and wires keeping him alive. It feels for a moment as though Newt might say something, but he tucks his head neatly beneath the point of Hermann’s chin and goes still.

 _I love you_ , Hermann thinks through the silence. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

Newton closes his fingers around Hermann’s hand, and he offers a reassuring squeeze. There is something playing silently on the wall-mounted television. Hermann thinks it’s a _Cheers_ rerun. He kisses the top of Newton’s head, nuzzling into the soft strands of his hair, and cradles him close. If Hermann can wrap his arms around him enough, can shelter him, things will be alright. The worst has passed, has _long_ passed. Newton is no longer in danger of passing away suddenly during the long nights, no longer confined to the tiny little room he had haunted in the urgent care wing. He is on the upswing of recovery, or so the specialists reassure him, with their tight-lipped smiles and serious faces; but Newton is tired of hospital gowns, tired of sterile smells and bland food and strict visiting hours, and Hermann is tired of staying awake at night wondering if Newton is sleeping soundly or if he, too, is awake, tortured by the mess that his brilliant, beautiful mind has become.

So Hermann holds him tightly, bundles him against his heart and loves him as hard as he possibly can.


	9. travelogue ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love has its own timing, as they say.

Hermann is a good driver. He is careful, cautious, extremely mindful of the speed limit. He drums his thumb idly atop the steering wheel. His eyes do not leave the long stretch of road beyond the windshield. Hermann is a good driver, though that does not necessarily mean that he enjoys it. He resists the urge to honk at a little red sports car that passes them, swallows a heated swear. If the PPDC had treated them like heroes they are, compensated them perhaps a bit more generously, extended the press tour, they would be sleeping in, instead of setting off on an excursion at ungodly hours of the morning.

No, that is not entirely true. They would have taken the joint lecture regardless of finances. The car in front of them brakes suddenly, and this time, Hermann honks.

Newton is still near-asleep, one foot propped up on the dashboard in spite of Hermann’s scolding, cheek squished against the cool glass of the window. He reaches across the center console to brush his fingertips along Hermann’s hand, the delicate knob of his naked wrist sticking out from the cuff of his sweater, coaxing. Ordinarily, Hermann might have had something to say about the importance of keeping both of one’s hands on the wheel (Newton, after all, is the most precious of cargo though this he will not say aloud); today, however, he lets Newton have his hand, allows the quiet lacing of their fingers together. 

The morning is still new, all pale pinks and barely-blues and wispy clouds laid out on the horizon, passing them by in a blur. Newton is in his pajamas, hair still tousled, feet stuffed haphazardly into his boots on the way out the door. His socks don’t even match - this, Hermann knows with a fond surety, knows without needing to look. (“I’ll change later,” he’d said, yawning, buckling himself into the passenger seat and promptly nodding off nearly as soon as Hermann had pulled out of their driveway forty-five minutes ago. Hermann knows that he will not change, not even when they inevitably pull over to grab a bite to eat at a rest stop. He does not mind.)

Now, Newton appears a bit more alert, though not by too much. He pulls their joined hands to his lips, presses the back of Hermann’s hand to his mouth absently. His thumb rubs over Hermann’s skin, leaving him tingling with miniscule sparks of sweetness, of unbelievable love in mundane places. Hermann chances a quick look at him from the corner of his eye - red plaid pajama pants (Hermann’s, of course), Jurassic Park t-shirt (Newton’s, worn to the point that the logo is nearly indistinguishable), glasses pushed up onto his forehead. Newton taps his foot, bounces his leg to the song that crackles through Hermann’s speakers. 

Hermann knows precisely what song it is, has known since the opening chord, though it is not until Newton mutters along endearingly to the very last line - the bit that goes  _ The only thing I know is that I love you and I’m holding on _ \- that Hermann can practically hear his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline. Newton inhales sharply, gives Hermann’s hand an involuntary squeeze.

“Oh, is this-”

Hermann smiles, squeezes Newton’s vaguely sweaty hand in return. “It is.”

“You really kept those CDs I made you?” His voice is hushed, awestruck. “It’s been- God, Herm, it’s been like eleven years, right?”

Hermann wants to say  _ Oh, you darling man; Newton, liebling, of course I did- I’ve loved you so long. Don’t you know that? _

“Something like that, yes,” Hermann says, the corner of his mouth pulling into a smile. It has been almost exactly eleven years. He wishes desperately to be in a position in which he could sprinkle Newton’s face in feather-light kisses like freckles. He does not say so. “Would it be terribly sentimental of me to say I treasure them quite dearly still?” 

“It  _ would _ , but y’know it would also give me, like, a raging boner, so maybe save it for the hotel,” Newton teases, grinning, and Hermann sniffs, feigning indignance and keeping his soppy, lovestruck eyes on the road.

 

* * *

They’d managed to avoid pulling over to rail each other senseless in the front seat of Hermann’s pristine car, barely sidestepped fumbling their way through sloppy handjobs in the hotel bathroom- no sooner had the door to their room clicked shut than Hermann had nearly thrown Newton onto the freshly-made bed before Newt decided to suck Hermann’s soul right out of his dick beneath the too-hot spray of the hotel shower. 

They’re still damp, more with shower than with sweat, and they’re both acutely aware of the fact that they’re going to have to get a new set of sheets from housekeeping before they can sleep, but Newt has a hard time caring when Hermann is preoccupied with scissoring him open and planting sloppy kisses along his sensitive inner thighs. The slope of Hermann’s nose nudges up against his balls when he tilts his face to lick tentatively at Newt, and he grips the pillow beneath his head, white-knuckled and longing.

“Oh,  _ Hermann _ \- I love you,” Newt says, more a drawn-out moan than any kind of sentence, and it’s not until the words leave his kiss-sore mouth that he realizes he has never said it aloud before. It’s not as if he needed to, after the Drift and the whole Seeing His Life And Also Hermann’s Life Thus Far Stretched Out Infinitely In All Directions business, but still. It’s a pretty big deal. 

He used to imagine how it would happen - he used to imagine it a  _ lot _ , actually, and it usually involved some romantic candlelit dinner bullshit that he liked to entertain when he had the downtime - but he never thought he’d say the three most important words he’d ever say in his life with three of Hermann’s long, sexy fingers knuckle-deep in his ass.

Judging by the way Hermann stops mid-curl of said long, sexy fingers, it’s not how he was imagining it would happen, either.

“You- what?” Hermann’s voice still carries the low husk that makes Newton’s cock twitch against his tattooed stomach. His eyes, half-lidded and hazy, have snapped open to scrutinize him from between the shameless spread of his thighs. Newton thinks to move his hips, to press himself down onto Hermann’s fingers and moan like a whore and get Hermann to Just Forget About It Okay, but the unreadable look in Hermann’s dark eyes stops him. He’s never felt so vulnerable before, not even in the Drift, than he feels spread beneath Hermann’s stare. Hermann sits up a little. There is something infinitely different about the well-loved angles of his face, the shadowed hollows of his cheeks naked and open and uncertain. His hair is a little curly, and it sticks to his forehead. Newt nods, swallows thickly. His throat is still scratchy and sore between the blowjob he’d been so eager to give fifteen minutes ago and the way he’s been carrying on under Hermann’s sexy, talented mouth, but he’s never been so sure of anything. 

“I love you,” he says again, a bit louder this time. Truthfully, Newt thinks he’d kind of like to shout it from the rooftop of the hotel until the entire city hears him. Hermann dips his head to kiss Newt -  _ hard _ . His free hand trails up Newt’s soft thigh, cups his cheek and slots his fingers in the shape of Newt’s face, his ear, the slight shape of his jaw. He tilts Newt’s profile against his own, shoves the wet warmth of his tongue past Newt’s teeth to graze the roof of his wanting mouth. Something along their neural link swells, threatens to pop in his head, and  _ God, this is what love feels like, isn’t it?  _ It’s too good, too much, and Newt’s hips buck.

When he pulls back abruptly to bump their noses together, lips still close enough to kiss, close enough that his warm breath tickles Newt’s face, Hermann says, “I love you.” He moves his fingers inside Newton, crooks them  _ just so _ and thrusts them perhaps a bit harder than he had meant to, kisses Newt’s jaw and his throat and his shoulder and sucks a hickey onto his chest. He squeezes around Hermann’s fingers, throws one leg up over Hermann’s narrow hip and bears down against his insistent digits. Newt whines, wraps him tightly in his arms to keep him close. “I love you, Newton.”

“ _ Hermann,  _ oh, shit, Hermann-” He bucks his hips against the feeling of Hermann’s fingers, and his head swims. Everything escapes him in a high, keening whine, and Hermann groans against the bit of his neck without any tattoos, a little below his jaw. “I love you- right there, yeah-” 

Hermann’s free hand trails from Newt’s flushed face down his chest, over his tense belly, and he wraps his fingers around Newt’s painfully hard length. He strokes him once, slowly, and Newt digs his heel into Hermann’s back. “Please, Herm, honey,  _ please _ ,” he begs, twisting in the crisp hotel sheets. “I’m gonna come, just-  _ oh,  _ say it again.”

Hermann thumbs at the head of Newt’s cock almost idly, smearing precome over Newt’s leaking tip and dribbling it down his hand, and kisses him once more. Newton writhes beneath him, desperate and moaning and so full (of love, of greedy wanting- of fingers). “I love you, Newton.”

Newt finishes with a shout, arches his back up off the mattress, painting both Hermann and himself with hot, sticky ropes of come. He trembles through his orgasm, clenching around Hermann’s fingers still inside him and panting heavily. Newt hardly registers the sudden emptiness as Hermann pulls his fingers gingerly from him in favor of tangling Newt in his arms and nosing into the messy top of his hair. He presses himself as close to Hermann as he can, front-to-front, arms and legs intertwined messily. Between their bodies, heaving and lazy, Hermann’s dick is still standing stiff. If he cares, Newt can’t tell- he’s too busy lavishing Newt in kisses, trailing his fingertips along the swirls and Kaiju that cover Newt’s soft skin. 

Newt tips his head back to mouth at Hermann’s bulging adam’s apple, to kiss along his jaw and work his hand between the passionate press of their hips together. Hermann doesn’t last long. Newt hardly makes it down to the root of his cock for the third, rhythmless time before his face pinches and he comes with a fragile little “ _ Oh _ .” He keeps moving his hand, jerking Hermann through the involuntary twitches that roll through his body, only stopping once Hermann begins to soften in his hand and his cries of pleasure turn to, “Darling, I’m too-  _ ah _ , enough, please, Newt.”

Newt relinquishes his grip, settles in the space where Hermann’s neck meets his broad shoulder. The world has shifted beneath them; they both know this with an irrefutable certainty that hums along their Drift bond as they lay basking in each other’s lazy warmth. How either of the two will manage to drag themselves from bed in the morning and dress for their joint guest lecture at the university, Newt doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to think about anything other than Hermann lying incredibly, miraculously beside him.

 


	10. it's like some kind of clarity when the letter's done and signed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we write letters, we write letters

When Newt returns from class, there is a letter on his desk. A blue post-it note is stuck to the front, his roommate’s messy handwriting decorating it. Newt can practically hear Jimmy Strickland’s smug, nasal tone strutting its way across the plane of the post-it, tripping just a little on the dog-eared corner.

“Came this morning, Mr. Popular,” it says, and he tears the little note promptly in half. The stamp on the clean white envelope is foreign, red postmarks denoting the sent date stamped over that.

_ Newton Geiszler _

Who even writes in cursive like that still, all flowy like he’s a goddamn calligrapher instead of a mathematician? He still can’t get past it, as much as he likes to believe he’s growing accustomed to his penpal’s quirks. Had he been in the company of others, Newt would’ve been ashamed of the goofy grin that splits his cheeks. He wants nothing more than to tear the envelope open and read the contents of the letter until his eyes turn to goop and fall out of his head, but he can’t, not yet.

He has a ritual, as stupid as even he, himself, thinks it is sometimes. But rituals need to be upkept, maintained, repeated. Newt wrestles a beer from the confines of the six pack in his refrigerator and pops the sad remainder of his Chinese food into the microwave. It's shrimp lo mein, as usual, and he doesn't even  _ want _ it, really, but he still waits the entire 90 seconds for it to heat up before yanking it from the bowels of his million-year-old microwave and bounding up the creaking stairs to his bedroom. It's the one  _ fucking _ place he can be alone properly.

Newt sets the food on his desk, slumps into the computer chair, and turns the letter over in his hand. His heart jumps, and he's glad his roommate isn't around to see the greediness with which he rips it open.

“ _ Dear Newton _ ,” he breathes, trying to imagine what the words might sound like in a voice he's never heard. Hermann is English - or lives in England, at least - so Newt figures he must have some sort of accent. He repeats the opening line in his best English accent, but it doesn't sound posh enough to suit someone like the way he imagines Hermann to be. Surely the guy can't really talk the way he writes, anyway, so Newt figures it's good enough and moves on.

 

* * *

 

Hermann Gottlieb all but tosses his other letters directly into the bin without batting an eye when he lights on the yellow paper envelope at the bottom of the stack.

“All the way from the States, huh?” Karla has taken up the habit of hovering expectantly near Hermann’s elbow when he starts sorting through the mail, and Hermann shoos her away good naturedly. He supposes she would have seen it regardless, since she has been kind enough to bring his mail to him from all the way across town. He’ll have to tell Newton that he's moved, at long last, into his own space and to send further correspondence to his new address. It’s not much, but the cramped quarters of the loft are infinitely preferable to living under the same slanted roof as his father.

“As much as I do appreciate you going through the trouble of bringing me my parcels, dear sister, I'd appreciate it all the more if you’d refrain from snooping,” Hermann grouches, clutching the envelope close to his chest and turning away from her.

 

“What is it, anyway?”

“If I wanted you to know, I'd very well allow you to open it yourself, wouldn't I?” He teases, then sobers quickly to glance back at the handwriting on the envelope. “It's research from Dr. Geiszler- notes, essays, the sort of nonsense that would bore you to tears.”

He can never dare confide even in his sister, his own flesh and blood, that there is something so close and intimate about the exchange of letters across oceans, across lives, across minds. It will sound childish the moment he hears himself say it, so he opts instead to say nothing more of the matter.

Karla purses her glossed lips together. “If you insist, Hermann. If you insist “

He does.

 

* * *

 

Newt presses his head against the window, vaguely registering the coolness of the glass against his forehead. The city thrums noiselessly below him, all neon and car lights and people no bigger than ants. He feels like a kid again, watching life happen in fast-motion past the windows the school bus while he remains at once ever the same and unshakably different. He should be at a basement show packed shoulder-to-shoulder with grungy strangers or sitting at a bar somewhere _meeting someone_ and being reckless instead of reading over a letter for the millionth time that night.

Every time he sends something into Hermann’s atmosphere, he sends a piece of himself with it and lately, Newt finds himself wondering when exactly he's going to run out of pieces. He is tired, longing for something more than what he has in a way that somehow looks beyond his five-almost-six degrees. He'd give every cell of his brilliantbrilliantbrilliant brain if, in return, he was given something with which to fill the ache like late-evening hunger that surfaces more often than not these days.

Even after Hermann has spent a good six pages front-and-back tearing holes in Newt’s carefully laid out theories (which he knows jack shit about; he's emphatically  _ not _ the biologist here, after all), Newt still tries to construct him bit by bit like it might make him materialize in the quiet of his bedroom. (Hermann is probably tall; he writes like he’s tall and whether or not that makes any actual sense is of no importance to Newt, who sticks by the assumption.) He's going to prove Hermann wrong, of course. He's going to shove his glaring mistakes right back into Hermann’s undoubtedly-smug, hopefully-handsome face and show him exactly how  _ incorrect _ his response is.

He takes a swig of his beer, pulls a pen from the MIT mug on his desk, and drafts his next letter on the back of a takeout menu, folding up another sliver of his heart to send like a paper plane into Hermann’s orbit.

 

* * *

 

Hermann keeps every letter. He has from the very beginning, though he still cannot say with any certainty what it was that compelled him to do it - and to keep doing it without so much a hesitation or second thought.

He dumps them carefully onto his neatly-made bed and pulls the lid off a bigger shoebox. This one had once housed a pair of winter boots (courtesy of Karla). Hermann cannot ever transfer Newton’s letters to a larger box without flipping through them first. Each one has a memory paper clipped to it, a time or place or taste or smell, and he catalogs them all in his heart with the gloved-hand precision of an archivist.

_Hermann-_ _I want to open this by saying I had some great sushi last night. It has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that I really love sushi. I don't know if you're a raw fish kinda guy, but I really hope you are because I'd love to take you for some. Some day._

He smiles to himself, small and secret even in the constant privacy that living alone affords him. Newton most certainly writes the way he talks. He probably gestures wildly, uses his hands and his arms a great deal more than he should.

Hermann had saved that particular letter to read over dinner, crammed into a booth of an overpriced restaurant in a feeble attempt to remove his mind from his equations however briefly. He remembers it as vividly as he remembers the disappointing cut of steak, the lukewarm mashed potatoes, the sudden irrational willingness to be shoulder-to-shoulder with Newton in the dim of a sushi bar on some busy city corner in Boston. Newton’s sharp letters dotting the page are a walkout before being served his check, an uncharacteristic impromptu stroll down the evening and back to where his apartment waits expectant, vacant, lights out.

 

* * *

 

Newt sets his latest letter from Hermann aside without even glancing at it, for the first time since they began writing, in favor of the two little polaroid pictures that he’s enclosed. Newt grins, heart brimming with unbridled glee at the long-awaited sight of his mysterious penpal.

“My  _ God _ , he’s a fuckin’ dork,” he says, aloud. The first picture is, apparently, Hermann - standing stock-still in a collared shirt buttoned all the way to his neck. His pants look like they’ve been ironed more times in the space of a week than Newt has ever bothered to iron anything in his  _ life,  _ and a crisp white lab coat is settled proudly on his square shoulders. Hermann’s hairstyle, the unfortunate offspring of an undercut and a bowl cut, only emphasizes his ears and the sharp angles of his face. His round glasses are perched stiffly on the bridge of his nose. He’s not smiling. His hands are clasped somewhere behind his back, the chalkboard stretching infinitely on either side of him impossible to read.

Newt laughs, relief flooding his system like a drug. He had been quietly harboring the fear that Hermann might try to pass off a picture of someone else as himself, but nobody could possibly look like that except Dr. Hermann Gottlieb himself. If Hermann was going to send a picture that wasn’t him, he wouldn’t have picked that guy. Newt is completely sure of that much.

In the second polaroid, though, his mouth is stretched into a half-grin, teeth peeking from between his thin lips like a military cemetery. The lines of his face are so much less imposing, and he seems years younger than in the first photo.  His eyes are crinkled at the corners. Newt wonders who took the picture, what had been done to make him laugh. (If Hermann laughed when he read his letters.)

There is a date at the bottom of each polaroid, tiny, perfect numbers that Hermann, himself, put there. He ponders, for the most fleeting of moments, if it’s possible to be attracted specifically to the way a person writes their numbers. Perhaps it only feels so special because he knows how much numbers mean to Hermann.

Newt studies him, dissects the features of the man he’s been writing to all this time, memorizes every horrible, wonderful detail. He keeps the thought of Hermann tucked in his pocket, and when he closes his eyes to daydream, there is no more welcome sight in the world.

 

* * *

 

Hermann is unable to wait more than a few seconds to open his letter from Newton. He retrieves the letter opener from his tidy desk drawer and pries the envelope apart.

Newton Geiszler is in singulat, fortunate possession of grin too large for his round cheeks, though he does not appear to possess the ability to brush his hair. He is cheeky and unkempt, young and brash-looking, and Hermann is enthralled.

In one photograph, his lab coat is filthy, his shirt unbuttoned, his tie hanging loose and thoughtless around his neck. His lab goggles are nearly lost in the disheveled mop of his hair, his elbow-length gloves stained with God-knows-what. To the side of him, a table sits piled high with entrails.  In the other photo, Newton’s t-shirt, emblazoned with the name of some band Hermann has never heard of, is wrinkled and worn. Newton is splayed across a sofa, and his boot-clad feet are propped up on the coffee table.

_ Is that his apartment?  _ He wrinkles his nose. Hermann has never been so simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by one person in his life.  

Truth be told, Hermann has already done his fair share of not-so-covert snooping to track down a photo of Newton, though he would happily die before admitting it to a single living soul. The one he had at last managed to dig up was leagues more professional than the ones Newton had enclosed with his latest reply, but Hermann is surprised to discover that he greatly prefers the candids to the black and white photo that he had found attached to an article about Newton’s subject of research.

The headshot, Hermann thinks, is more than likely one of a handful of times that Newton has ever buttoned a shirt all the way, tied his tie properly.

He smiles, warm and tight-lipped, and sets the photos gently in the top drawer of his desk.

 

* * *

 

The next letter that comes is different.

_ Dearest Newton, _

 

* * *

 

Hermann begins his emails the same way he begins his letters. Hesitant as he initially was to shift to digital correspondence, the fact that he would have significantly less time to wait for a reply was too appealing to pass up. He sits at his desk, long fingers poised over the keyboard. Realistically, there are ten other more pressing things spelled out on his agenda that Hermann  _ should _ be occupying himself with but cannot find it in himself to focus on for longer than a minute or so. There is a sliver of him that fears his colleagues will begin to catch on and grow suspicious, tossing questions at him that he cannot trust himself to field without digging himself a hole.

It’s not that he has been keeping Newton a secret. They know of the young genius, certainly, and are aware of Hermann’s correspondence with him; but they do not know that Newton is a gas expanding at an alarming rate and filling up every inch of Hermann’s mind. He has no room for anything else, no desire to make space again for it. His fellow academics are increasingly _un_ aware of the shift that, to Hermann, feels as plain as the nose on his face, as the smiles he stashes behind his mug or coughs conspicuously into his sleeve.

Hermann closes an open browser tab with the ghost of a sigh, talking himself for the thousandth time that day out of purchasing a plane ticket, out of asking for Newton’s phone number, out of requesting that Newton take the time to meet up with him somewhere (anywhere), some time (any time).

When Newton’s reply  _ dings _ ten minutes later and shakes him back into his body, Hermann wishes Newton had suggested exchanging e-mail addresses months ago. Hermann is shamelessly, selfishly grateful that Newton seems to have nothing better to do than to write him lengthy responses.

“Busy, Gottlieb?”

Hermann waves a hand dismissively without bothering to turn to the colleague standing behind him.

“Extremely.”

  
  



	11. and i quit my job so i could hold you all the time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody ever said that recovery would be easy, even with a hand to hold.

He doesn’t want to be there on a good day, and he really doesn’t want to be sitting there now, sunk down in the sticking leather armchair that makes him feel three inches tall. He wonders absently if maybe he can talk Hermann into accompanying him to a movie later, if for nothing else than to share a big cup of soda and a jumbo popcorn and put up the armrest between them so Hermann can drape his arm across Newt’s shoulders. As nice as the thought is, as much as it calms him, he has to get through this first.

Newt twists the silver band on his finger, eyes trained on the ticking hands of the analog clock hanging lonely on the wall. It's not a hospital, not this time. It's beige walls and deep brown leather furniture and a lot more shades of brown than Newt ever wants to see again for as long as he lives, but it sure as fuck  _ smells _ like a hospital. It makes him sick.

He still has flashbacks to that hospital every so often, feverish and bleary, triggered by a sound or a smell that he can’t ever prepare himself for. Sometimes, Hermann is there, swimming washed out and distorted like looking at him through a frosted glass window pane, just beyond his grasp, fighting for him. (Newt isn’t sure exactly how he knows that’s what Hermann is doing there, but he knows.)

Other times, most often, he is alone and in agony. It is like almost everything else: more of a feeling than a memory, something experienced out of his body and through the lens of the Drift between he and Hermann. Newt grips the arm of the chair until his knuckles turn white, grounding himself.

“Newt?”

He fights to keep down the lunch he’d had with Hermann just half an hour before, knees touching beneath the little cafe table, Hermann gazing at him with the special sort of quiet warmth he seemed to reserve specifically for Newt. Newt, who struggles to keep his newly adjusted cocktail of medicines in his stomach along with his food. He can't bring himself to look at his therapist for fear that he might just stand up and walk out the door. His fingers itch for the orange bottle that he knows is in Hermann’s possession. He wonders if Hermann can feel the sudden peak in his already-high anxiety levels, if he’s worried for him, if the pounding in his ears is his own heart or Hermann’s.

Of course he doesn't blame Hermann. Why should he? The insinuation that he might feel that way at all is enough to trigger his fight-or-flight response almost instantly. None of this mess is any of Hermann’s fault. Newt had been the one to leave, to push him away with both hands and construct a life without Hermann in it. (Though, as he is learning, that was not quite his fault either.) Hermann had saved him from Liwen, even after what he’d just done, after everything he had done the ten years leading up to it.

Newt bites his lip against the indignant “ _ My husband did everything he could to save me, how the fuck are you gonna ask me if I blame him for what I did to myself? _ ”, the “ _ I did that, not Hermann,”  _ worrying that the voice he speaks with might not belong to him.

He is free, though there are times when Newt doubts even that. He is managing, yes, and coping, of course. The specialists had cleared him, the doctors and the scientists that had been poking around in his head for what felt like an eternity had told him that he was finally alright. He silently harbors the needling insistence that it’s more of a remission, a dormant volcano, a ticking time bomb that will destroy him for good when it explodes.

There are nights when he thinks he sees Alice, bobbing knowingly in her tank near his bed, bathing him in the putrid yellow-green glow of her preservation fluid, only to wake trembling in the dark. In Hermann’s arms, in their bed, in their home-  _ safe. _ Hermann loves him. Hermann has always loved him. These are things Newt is certain of, should be certain of.

Hermann Gottlieb had sat with him, wrapped him in his parka when he couldn't remember his own name, held him when he couldn't stop himself from shaking. Hermann had sheltered him when his head was all white noise and he couldn't see, when he cried until he thought he might shrivel up and disappear.

(Hermann loves him. Hermann doesn't blame him. Hermann doesn't say things he doesn't mean. Hermann is there for him. Hermann  _ loves him _ . Hermann is- )

( _ But _ ) there is the tiniest suggestion of a voice that wonders how things might have changed if Hermann had come to have dinner with him that day. Hermann undoubtedly would have ended up in Newt’s bedroom, and he would have seen Alice for what she was. If Hermann Gottlieb was such a genius, such a shining prodigy, how could he have missed the clear-cut signs that Newt had left for him like a proverbial trail of breadcrumbs? He must not really have known Newt half so well as he thought he did. Hermann could have stopped this, stopped everything- Newt had practically left the keys to saving the world (saving  _ him _ ) right there in his begging palm.

It is Hermann’s fault all those people are dead, that cities are in shambles, in the same way that a witness who says nothing is complicit in the crime.

There is a stab like a hot poker between his eyes - the spot Hermann rubs with his thumb when the pain resurfaces and brings tears stinging at the corners of his eyes - and he pinches the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb. Newt feels the brush of Hermann’s hand resting over his own, a forgiving phantom limb, and disgust rolls over him in waves. He wants to believe that he would never hold those thoughts, not even for the briefest of moments, but he's not so sure anymore.

“Newt?”

“Sorry, uh, can you- can you repeat the question?”


	12. travelogue iii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stopover in London is billed as uneventful - a few days off, some sightseeing, perhaps; nothing ever goes the way it's planned.

Hermann’s hands, slender and flat and wide, are Newt’s lifeline. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think of the way Hermann had held him after that first Drift, but they are strolling arm in arm down a London street when it becomes so suddenly clear to him that Hermann is the only thing he really has in the world. No living parents to speak of anymore, no siblings. Not that any of that could compare to the home he's found in Dr. Hermann Gottlieb's unlikely embrace.

The notion had occurred to him on the plane, suspended above the world, Hermann scribbling notes into his notepad while Newt observed lazily through half-lidded eyes. It had been a brief thought that morning, watching Hermann button the topmost button of his shirt in the reflection from the hotel mirror, but he can’t shake the urgency it now holds.

Home is where Hermann is, tucked elegantly beside him, and even the thought of having to be without him is like the empty rush of air that accompanies the absence of someone you're used to being with.

The breeze stirs his hair, sets a few of the signs displayed outside the shops that line the street swinging idly. The air smells faintly of fresh chips, but he isn’t hungry. Newt thinks of the ring he's kept stuffed in his jacket pocket the last few months, the way it would look on Hermann’s left hand, how it would be smooth and cool to run his finger across when he rubs Hermann’s knuckles with his thumb. He is more certain of this than he has ever been about anything else. It’s in the way Hermann calls him _darling_ , the way he kisses him and knows how Newt likes his coffee without giving it a second thought. He is more sure of Hermann, limping along steadily at his side, than he is of himself.

“Are you alright, my dear?” Hermann asks, plucking a bit of lint from the scarf he’d made Newt wear out on their excursion. It’s the first thing he’s said since their argument in the hotel room that morning (after he'd called Newton an "absolute child" and Newt, in return, had argued that Hermann was pedantic and inconsiderate and-), after which the pair had dressed in silence and Hermann had stiffly hailed a cab to take them to lunch. Even lunch had been quiet, their food ordered short and snippy, silverware clinking tensely against their plates like some horrid wind chime; the meal sits in Newt’s stomach like a rock. “Are you cold?”

Through the stunted stillness of their morning, Newt had been feeling the weight of the ring in his pocket, grateful that their neural link didn’t seem to allow Hermann the ability to read his mind. It's not a matter of _when_ or _if_ , but _how._ Should he maybe wait until they hit France? France is romantic as _fuck_ , but he isn’t sure if Hermann will take any pleasure in any kind of public proposal.

Newt shakes his head, aware of his red tipped nose giving him obviously away. He tightens his hold on Hermann’s slender arm, the acceptance of an unspoken apology, the promise to leave the events morning in the past where they belong. “I'm okay.”

He _is_ okay, truly. They always are, the two of them clinging helplessly to each other at the end of it all no matter the day's troubles. Hermann folds, shifts, makes room for Newt to nestle against the warmth of his coat.

 

* * *

 

 

Hermann has exhausted himself in every sense of the word. When they return to the hotel room for the evening, he eases himself onto his side of the bed and lets his eyes fall closed without even bothering to undress. Newt coaxes him into taking his pill, offers to prop him up with the spare pillows Hermann had demanded from room service the night prior, but Hermann merely shakes his head.

“Herm, what's wrong? Are you sick?”

“I'm afraid I’ve overdone it, my love,” he mutters, resting his hand across his flat middle, giving his fingers an idle drum. “No cause for alarm, though- please, stop fussing over that. Newton, put that down, I am perfectly capable of- I just need to rest a while. Travel doesn’t particularly agree with me.”

Newt studies the pained creases in his face, the stiff bent to his leg, but swallows his argument and reaches to unbutton the very top button of Hermann’s shirt, brush the stray hair from his forehead. He allows it. Hermann sags into the mattress, deflated. He is going to fight him tooth and nail when Newt insists that he remain in the confines of the bed for the duration of the day instead of setting out on their meticulously scheduled sightseeing, but it’s for his own good. He’d burn himself out completely without Newt putting the brakes on him every once in a while, and he knows it.

He finds a documentary on the television in hopes that Hermann will find the narrator’s voice soothing, but by the time he settles on one about the deep sea and its various inhabitants, Hermann is already dozing, mouth open slightly to exhale little snores.

He doesn't look younger when he's asleep the way Newt used to imagine he would. Even when his face is free of the creases brought on by a frown, when his eyes aren't narrowed in some scathing disapproval, the sharp angles and hard lines are still there. As far as Newt is concerned, he is the most handsome man on earth - in the entire universe, probably. Hermann’s eyes move, flickering beneath the thin skin of his eyelids, long eyelashes dusting his cheeks. No, not probably.  _Definitely._

The narrator on the television dives into the intricacies of whale migration.

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Hermann blinks himself awake, Newt has been sitting with the little ring box in his hand for half an hour, waiting, teetering on the precarious edge of the rest of their lives. He could have gone to sleep, nestled himself into Hermann’s rigid warmth to keep himself from grabbing for the box; but Newt has never once considered himself one to back away from something he wants just because it’s frightening. No use springing it on Hermann, Newt figures, and any grandiose romantic gesture in public would only irritate him, embarrass him, give him cause to lock Newt out of their room and make him sleep in the hall as much as Newt, himself, would delight in a public proposal.

Hermann pushes himself into a sitting position and moves to rub the bits of sleep from his eyes. His pain medication has slowed him, made him groggy, and he stifles a yawn into the back of his hand. Newt’s heart leaps into his throat when Hermann stretches his arms above his head, shirt pulling against the tensile strength hiding beneath the unassuming fabric; he wonders if Hermann can sense the anxiety, the anticipation that he feels is tangible. Newt briefly considers stashing the box in the side table drawer before Hermann can catch a glimpse of it, to save it safely for another time. It’s not that he is uncertain about the gravity of his deciding to do this, not in the least, but _what if Hermann says no?_

There is no logical, rational reason for Hermann to reject him, though, all things considered. They had Drifted together, saved the world together. Newt wonders if maybe he shouldn't wait until they settle into their house, after the conferences are through and they aren't in a new country every few days.

“What time is it?” Hermann asks, throat gravelly, squinting at the infomercial playing on the television. Newt’s mouth goes dry all at once, like when the dentist used to suction the saliva from his mouth when he’d still been forced to go in for the year's dental exam as a kid. He can see the gears turning in Hermann's brilliant head, fitting perfectly together as he dissects the details of the situation he's awakened in. Newt reaches for the remote and flicks the TV off. Hermann looks at it until the picture has faded and the screen is black.

“Hey, uh, Herm?”

Hermann turns to him, one eyebrow lifted, mouth quirked in sneaking suspicion. “Newton, what is all this, then?”

“Okay, just- just hear me out-”

It is then that Hermann’s sleep-addled gaze falls on the box in Newt’s sweaty hand. His breath catches audibly in his throat, disbelief written over his pale features. He looks stunned in the soft yellow of the lamp, a grim oil painting brought to life.

“Newton.”

“I know I'm not the easiest person to deal with, but you've been there with me through, like, _everything,_ Hermann. Okay not literally everything, but all the important stuff-”

“ _Newton.”_ Newt can see that Hermann is tearing up, brown eyes glassy and brimming, but now that he’s started, he can't keep the words from tumbling past his lips.

“For fuck’s sake, Hermann, shut up for like two minutes and let me finish! I'm not any good at this emotional stuff- Jesus, now you got me tearing up, too. Fuck, man.” Newt pauses to sniff, to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. “You're the biggest pain in the ass I've ever met, and trust me, I mean that; but I've loved you since we wrote those letters. I know you know that, but I've never really said it out loud. Not the way I should. I love you, Herm, and I dunno what we’re gonna do next, but, shit, whatever it is- I don't wanna do it without you. I don't wanna do anything without you.”

Hermann, unexpectedly, is sobbing quietly when Newt stops talking. It occurs to Newt with all the force of being punched square in the chest that he has never, not once in all the time they've known each other, seen Hermann Gottlieb cry. Hermann mashes the heels of his hands into his eyes like it might plug up whatever dam has broken, but it doesn't. He lets out a tiny little hiccup, a ghost of a thing, and Newt’s chest aches for him; but he's frozen to the spot, the black box unopened in his white-knuckled hand.

Newt feels the seconds stretch endlessly, a piece of taffy pulled longer and longer, giving him time to become intimately, painfully familiar with every acute detail of his surroundings. Hermann’s sweater is rumpled from sleep. The lamp shade on the nightstand behind the shape of his head is tilted slightly to one side, off-center where Hermann’s wrist had bumped it the night before. He can feel the beginnings of beads of sweat prickling at his hairline despite the low hum of the air conditioning unit across the room. Someone in the hallway yells to another unseen person, their accent thick and muffled through the walls. There are footsteps further down, shuffling, then nothing.

Hermann hasn't said yes.

He leans over the side of the bed suddenly to root around in the suitcase laying open on the ground, his untucked shirt riding up and giving Newt a sliver of soft, pale skin to focus on while he struggles to keep from vomiting the contents of his stomach onto the hotel bedclothes. The clothes in the suitcase whisper as Hermann shifts them around. Newt can envision him packing up and walking out the door without even pausing to look back. When Hermann rights himself with some effort, tears still dribbling down his face and giving his cheeks a shiny glaze, there is a box in his hand, too.

 

* * *

 

Their conference itinerary brings them sweeping breathlessly into Berlin, arms intertwined, spines bent slightly and heads bowed together as though in a permanent knowing chuckle. They glow, both of them, like everyone in a ten mile radius can see the silver shine of their rings glinting in the early evening sunset.

Newt had spent the entire plane ride to Germany admiring his hand, Hermann’s hand, their hands fit neatly together like a two-piece puzzle. They kissed enough times to make the woman across the aisle from them shift in her seat and make a show of averting her eyes. She had coughed into her hand once, loudly, and Hermann nearly climbed into Newton’s lap to kiss him once more. Hermann had even smiled, the softness almost out of place on his hard face, at the stewardess who brought them their plastic cups of wine.

“I thought you were terrified to fly,” Newt had teased, nudging Hermann’s side but not hard enough to make him spill his drink. “What happened to that? No white knuckles? No sick bag?”  
  
“I suppose engagement rather agrees with me,” he’d said, smiling still to himself and craning his head to look past Newton and out the window. They had almost missed their flight, between Hermann nearly not letting him roll out of bed and into the shower, and then Hermann kissing him so fiercely at every opportunity that they almost didn't make it out of there in time, either. They had managed it, of course, boarding bright-eyed and red-faced.

Now, Berlin seems to welcome them with outstretched arms.


	13. now and then i stumble on what i've misplaced but never lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann thinks that shouldering the weight of two minds simultaneously is beginning to take its inevitable toll.

Newt is both conscious and Precursor-free simultaneously for all of four minutes.

This is how long it takes for the specialists to realize that he’s finally come around, for them to come rushing into the room to sedate him before he can do anything else.

First, the machines beeping idly in every corner of the room start to sound less like background noise and more like something incredibly alarming. It is enough to propel Hermann from where he is slumped in the uncomfortable plastic chair he has dragged in from the hall and commandeered wordlessly. His first nauseating thought is that something terrible is happening, that Newton is dying, that his day-and-night fighting to save him is all in vain-  but then he catches Newt’s fingers twitching, a desperate grasp for something to clutch. He covers the smaller hand with both of his own, sucked back into orbit by the gravity that keeps them tied to each other. He is not dying. Every brain scan Hermann has looked at, every time he has had to face the reality of the tiny, wavering line of Newt’s consciousness compared to the jagged peaks of the precursors-

“Newton! Can you hear me, Newt?”

He fights to make sense of their scrambled neural link, placid with inactivity until just moments ago. It buzzes like the onset of a migraine behind his eyes, fills his heart with hope like helium. Hermann squeezes Newt’s hand, mindful of the IV, and Newt squeezes back. His bruised, dark-ringed eyes fly open as if he has been shocked awake, brought unexpectedly to life, though Hermann sees it in slow motion. He looks harrowed, haunted, and it takes every ounce of Hermann’s quickly-waning self-restraint to keep from flinging himself into the hospital bed to pepper Newt’s face with kisses.

“ _ Newton _ .”

After everything he’s done - playing Newt’s favorite songs to the stillness of the room, talking to him for hours on end in hopes that he might hear, straining to reach Newt through their neural link until he gave himself a headache - Hermann can hardly believe his eyes. Newt opens his mouth once, then twice, but says nothing, a fish out of water gaping at Hermann. There is bewilderment scribbled across his face, fear, a stab of recognition when his erratic gaze finally settles on Hermann. Hermann can feel him wrestle with panic, with pain, with himself. 

Tears spring suddenly to his eyes and come spilling in fat streams down his sunken cheeks. Even through the tears, Newt is himself, frightened eyes a safe, soft green in spite of the remnants of burst blood vessels staining one eye pinkish-red. Hermann can see it, can feel it in his bones and in every fiber of his being as surely as though he, himself, is whole again. Newt’s face looks blank and incomplete without his glasses. It is a small detail, all things considered, but Hermann finds himself crying as well- weeping quite openly and kissing Newt’s hands, brushing his lips over the bumps of his knuckles and the raised scars from years of sharp dissection equipment and poor depth perception. Newt smells like the hospital itself, too clean, hardly human, but Hermann breathes deeply anyway.

He thinks Newt says his name, but his mind is overwhelmed near to bursting with the sudden frenzied spike in ghost-Drift activity. A fascinating phenomenon, it springing back to life like this, but absolutely impossible to begin to pick apart when it’s swirling in his skull. Newt manages to pry himself from Hermann’s white-knuckled grasp to throw his arms around his neck, wires and tubes be damned. Hermann thinks for a split moment to chide him, to tell him to be careful, but he can feel Newt telling him to  _ Shut up, Herm, just shut up.  _ He cries into Hermann’s chest, raspy, hiccuping sobs; Hermann lets himself cry into Newt’s too-long hair.

“You’ve been here all this time,” Newt manages, muffled by Hermann’s sweater.

“I’d never leave you alone,  _ liebling _ .”

Hermann does not have to say it. He is well and suddenly aware that Newt knows, that Newt has seen the past decade through the Drift-warped lens of Hermann’s memories like being hit with a freight train.

Newt draws back to look at Hermann with bleary, swollen eyes. He could have died there in the hospital bed, either a victim of the Precursors or a victim of experimental procedures that were just a bit  _ too _ experimental. Memories shift and settle into place; he knows everything, but Hermann wishes against all odds that he would not have to bear that unfathomable burden. Hermann kisses his forehead, his nose, and means to kiss the rest of Newt’s face with just as much methodical care, but Newt presses their foreheads together and traces his fingers over the lines in Hermann’s face, smearing tears across his cheeks.

“Herm-”

“Shhh, shh. Don't- I'm here, Newton. We’ll have time enough to talk of that later. Oh, my darling.” He can feel the blame, the self-loathing, the guilt rising steadily in Newt’s mind as the memories return to him, and Hermann fights to calm him. The machines beep in time with the sudden spike in Newt’s heart rate. Hermann threads his fingers into Newt’s hair, finding its unkempt length altogether strange and familiar.

Hermann is so focused on Newt, on soothing him, that neither of them see the specialist round the corner into the room, syringe of sedative in hand. Newt is peacefully unconscious before Hermann is escorted, seething, down the long white hallway.

 

* * *

 

The memory replays often enough to twist itself into a nightmare. Sometimes, it ends in Newt’s hands, IV and all, like a vise around Hermann’s neck, squeezing with unbelievable force until he bruises purple and awakes heaving. He does not mention it to Newt, who holds him close, who must surely catch snippets of it in his own head from time to time yet never speaks a word of it. Hermann utters a word of it to no one, either, especially not the therapist he had promised Newt to see regularly (“If I gotta go, so do you,” Newt had said, arms crossed, glazed eyes distant, and Hermann had agreed with a nod of his head and a kiss to Newt’s cheek.)

That, of course, defeats the purpose of seeing a therapist.

Newt snores beside him, face half-smashed into the pillow. Hermann can only see him in pale slants where the streetlights come through their partly-open curtains and fall across Newt’s face. An eye, squeezed shut, stubbly eyelashes resting just barely against his cheek. The corner of his mouth, stuck open, the hint of a scar where he thinks Newt must have once kept a lip piercing. He is filling out his clothes again, climbing back to a healthy weight. This is good. Things are good, all factors considered. To have him here, legs bent at odd angles beneath the covers, is happiness, but there are still times (like tonight, the night before, a rainy afternoon in the middle of the week prior) when Hermann’s brain does not seem to sit in his head quite right.

Hermann climbs silently from their bed, stops to grab his cane where it leans against the nightstand and gaze out the window at the remnants of the city still prolonging its sleep. Cars roll to a stop at the intersection down the street that runs along in front of their building, their tail lights reflecting distorted in the puddles on the street. The unspoken anonymity of the city still appeals to him greatly, even if the constant noise and activity buzzing around him does not. He is growing older, on the inside more so than anything else, and his bones long quietly for a bit of peace that he fears is too far gone. He thinks of a house near the coast, close enough to smell the sea on the breeze, a porch where they can sit hand in hand; but there is no coaxing Newton to leave the idle bustle of the city- at least not for now.

His head aches, a familiar throbbing behind his eyes like an old acquaintance knocking at his door, the diluted way Newt’s hip hurts when Hermann’s does.  _ You get used to the, uh, the echoes _ , Newt said once, but Hermann isn’t quite certain of that. There is a jolt, a flash across his mind like he has just blinked his eyes, sickly green and fluorescent, there and gone before Hermann has time to dissect it properly. He limps into the bathroom, flicks on the light, squints at the image of himself staring back, haunted, from the mirror. Hermann turns on the cold water with the intention of washing his face, but he lets it run quietly into the wide sink basin instead. Carrying the weight of not one mind, but two, takes its inevitable toll on a person after some time, he supposes. Hermann supposes a lot of things nowadays, lost without a method to test the hypotheses, and so he supposes without any real end.

He leans forward to cup his hand beneath the running water but stops short, eye to tired eye with his reflection. He is a ghost of himself; Newton’s shirt looks too big on his pale skin-and-bones frame, his eyes are sunken, the hollows of his cheeks deeper than they have ever been. His nose has started to bleed.


	14. all there is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann Gottlieb used to be a chain smoker, though Hermann Gottlieb certainly does not look like he used to be anything.

Hermann lights a cigarette.

His time is short - he knows this but lights the cigarette anyway and stuffs the rest of the almost-new pack behind the neat rows of silverware in their kitchen drawer where it has lived for well over a year. His fingers tremble as he tries to strike the match but the first long, sweet drag steadies him like falling into the well-worn routine of chalking a formula across the blackboard in the old lab. It has been so long since he’s thought to even raise a cigarette to his lips, but the slight weight of it between his fingers just feels _right_.

Hermann leans heavily on the granite countertop, the smooth coolness of it raising goosebumps to his bare arms. Rain beats gently on the house, tapping against the roof and the windows and the new siding. A murky calm makes itself comfortable in the center of Hermann’s chest; he missed this. His chain smoking days, joints stiff from standing alone at his chalkboard for an ungodly amount of time, are long behind him, but the relief that floods his nervous system when he takes a drag is an old friend. Newton will most certainly see fit to chide him for it, but it does not matter half as much to Hermann in that moment as scratching the itch for nicotine.

It has been years since he’d last had a cigarette, but Hermann feels that he can indulge himself just this once. Just this once. It has been such a long week, a long month, a long life. He is happy teaching courses at the college, yes, he supposes that he is happy about this; but it tires him so. He thinks sometimes about quitting, just walking right out the door for no reason other than the fact that he can. Hermann would miss the nameplate on his door, though, the proud proclamation of _Hermann Gottlieb-Geiszler, PhD._ He closes his eyes to the stillness of the house around him, hears the shower upstairs stop running, hears Newton’s singing floating muffled through the open bathroom door.

Newton - sweet, kind Newton who had taken pity on a hermit crab wasting away in the display of a shop window the day before and whisked it away to come live with them; who had spent the night setting up a tank for it, his nose buried in articles about proper hermit crab keeping. Hermann laughs softly to himself at the memory of Newton’s sheepish grin when he’d come home to find him crouched on the ground, filling a tank with fine sand. Hermann had grumbled about it, naturally, but more for show than anything else; once Newton’s mind was set on something, there was really no talking him out of it. And besides, he’d said, he already got the tank and did Hermann really want the crab’s untimely death on his hands? (He did not, rolled eyes and murmured complaints about sand spilling onto the floor aside.)

The crab seems content, though, amongst the shells that Newton has been dropping into the tank for his careful consideration. Hermann glances idly through the kitchen entryway into the living room at the shape of the tank against the far wall. The shells are nice-looking, even the one that Newton had spent the morning painting to look like Otachi. It makes his skin crawl to look at the crab itself for longer than a few seconds, though - something about the claws clacking, the tiny, beady eyes and their thousand-mile stare. He drags deeply on his cigarette.

Hermann is caught with his eyes half-lidded, gazing absently through the curl of pale blue smoke that rises from the burning end of his cigarette. Newton frowns, dropping the towel he’d used to ruffle his hair dry into the laundry basket, pushing his glasses up the precious slope of his nose. He pads across the floor in his bare feet to pluck the cigarette from Hermann’s hand and snuff it out in the glass ashtray beside the point of Hermann’s elbow.

_Herm, babe, we talked about this._

They had, indeed, talked about this. Hermann sighs, defeated, shameful. They had talked about this. He means to look away, but Newt cups the hard angles of his cheek in his hand as though Hermann is made of fine china, precious and dear and susceptible to breakage. He can feel Newton picking apart his features, dissecting him, cataloging minute details. Hermann expects an uncharacteristic scolding and is prepared to accept it without a fight, but receives in its place a kiss on the tip of his nose. He softens under Newt’s hands, face crinkling.

_I know, I know._

Newton drops his hands from Hermann’s face, lets them fall to intertwine their fingers. Hermann’s hands are warm, teetering on sweaty. Hermann smiles, the corners of his mouth quirking upwards. He lowers his eyes to stare at their hands demurely, almost shy.

Hermann's smiles used to be so rare- brittle, fragile things more for show than anything else. But Hermann has learned with time to be human, to let Newton see the beats of his heart, count his ribs like miracles. Hermann is quite good at being human, as far as Newt is concerned, whether Hermann himself thinks so or not.

“Dance with me,” Newton says suddenly, giving Hermann’s hands a light squeeze. Hermann looks up at him through the fan of his eyelashes, shakes his head sightly.

“Newton, I don't- What I mean to say is that I never learned how to dance. Or, rather, I haven’t since-”

“Then lemme show you. It’s okay, I got you- Here, just put your arms around my neck like that. And then it's just-” Newton places his hands on Hermann’s hips as if they have belonged there all his life and tries to lead Hermann into the first few steps. Hermann steps squarely on Newt’s foot, and his face screws up in a wince. “Yeah, _ow._ Okay, let’s try this: stand on my toes.”

“If I’m not mistaken, standing on your toes is the _opposite_ of what I'm attempting to achieve here, Newton.”

“Jesus, Herm, shut up. Just trust me.”

Hermann balances himself carefully, obediently on the tops of Newt’s feet and tightens his grip around Newton’s neck, grateful that he can lean his slight weight against Newt to keep himself steady but apprehensive that he might slip and topple them both. Newt starts to move again, slow and careful, and Hermann feels a surge of giddiness in his chest, some echo of what he had always imagined a first date might feel like when he was a gawky teenager who spent too much time in his studies and none with his peers. Hermann rubs the pad of his finger along the soft little hairs at the nape of Newton’s neck. He can feel the thrum of Newt’s pulse beneath his palms, soft and secret, something meant only for him.

He does not know where to look; Newton’s smile is too bright, too endearing, like staring directly into the sun. He settles on glancing intermittently between the encouraging line of Newton’s lips and the soft kindness in his eyes, afraid that focusing too long on either will make his knobby knees knock together still, after all this time.

It is a bit too reminiscent of the first time they slept together, lifetimes ago in the pristine neatness of Hermann’s cramped room in the Hong Kong Shatterdome: not knowing quite where to put their hands, legs bumping together every time one of them shifted in an effort to be more comfortable. Newton had hit his head against the wall at one point. But that, too, had ended in smiling, in thrilled and breathless laughter once they had managed to figure it out lying tangled together, carrying between them the pleasant weight of this new and intimate thing.

Newt hums the tune of some old song Hermann knows he has heard somewhere long ago, muffled and sepia-toned. He struggles to recall the words, feeling them almost tangible on his tongue; but Newt, still humming low in the back of his throat, cranes his neck to rest their cheeks together and their neural link supplies the lyrics as they sway.

_Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that’s all there is, my friend, then let’s keep dancing-_

Newt gets stuck there and starts again from the beginning, though his feet never seem to miss a beat of it. Hermann wants to inquire as to where on earth Newton learned to dance, but he thinks better of it and lets his entire face stretch into an easy smile instead. He wants to scrunch himself down, make his body small enough that he can fit his head beneath the soft line of Newton’s chin and rest it beside the comfort of his heartbeat. He settles for tilting his head to kiss him, to brush his fingers gently over the corners of Newton’s eyes where a rather becoming set of barely-there crow’s feet have started to make an appearance.

They are getting older, both of them, growing stiff and threatening to start turning grey, but Hermann only sees the Newton he met all those years ago, standing like a fool, a deer in the headlights, not knowing then that he was already irreversibly, irreparably in love with him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on twitter @kaijubf


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